Selective Amnesia
by Storm Seller
Summary: *Everybody lies.* When two of Wilson's patients die, the family comes looking for revenge. But who really gets hurt in the assault and exactly how much is Wilson at fault? Dr. House turns sleuth to investigate. SLASH.
1. Chapter 1

**Selective Amnesia.**

Author: Storm

Cast: House & Wilson (established relationship), Cuddy, Cameron, Foreman, Chase, Thirteen, Taub, Kutner, Stacy, Mark and others.

Rating: Adult.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Greg House. And everyone. Probably including his creators. And theirs.

Summary: When two related oncology patients die after a series of medical screw-ups, the family hold Dr. Wilson accountable – in more ways than one. While the medical malpractice machinery whirs into action, some of the relations mete out a rougher kind of justice that results in the doctor becoming the patient. But who really gets hurt in the assault and exactly how much is Wilson at fault? As the law and the hospital go head to head, Dr. House turns his notorious diagnostic skills on the crime scene and the culprits. The more he proves his own theory – that _everybody_ lies – the more it becomes critical that he make his own brand of medical malpractice count as admissible evidence in court. Otherwise, PPTH's Boy Wonder Oncologist is going to wind up not only in a hospital bed, but in a jail cell. The trouble is, whilst House plays private eye, Wilson begins to wonder if it might not be better for the physician to tend to himself.

Warnings: I don't like warnings; they give the game away. ***However**.* Includes a serious assault, discussions of rape and a patient suicide. Also – by necessity – includes some original characters.

Notes: 1) This is set around season five. Amber is dead; Kutner isn't (yet) and House is as sane as he ever gets. 2) If anyone can oblige, I'm looking for a beta who can manage a reasonably fast turn-around and ideally someone who would be willing/able to have their brain picked for medical and/or legal knowledge.

* * *

**Part One:**

It wasn't quite _that_ scene from _Psycho_, but it got nearer with every replay. His weight braced on his good hand – his left, fortunately – Wilson dug his fingers into the strip of sanitary paper covering the examining table and tried not to see it over a fifth time. He couldn't help it if he closed his eyes. The dark silhouettes of exam room three, trapped on his retinas, contracted and paled into the half-screen cubicles of the fourth floor staff locker room, its broken door listing on its hinges and water spewing out onto the grip mats. But even with his eyes open, the mottled blue linoleum of the clinic floor was trying to screen repeats. The whispering roar of his too rapid pulse echoed in his ears and made for a disquieting soundtrack. It merged with the near constant hum of his tinnitus and the remembered throbbing of water, fleshy thumps and gargling yells. Intermittently, the internal din was accompanied by the external crackling of swab packets, the snaps of the SART's camera and their tactful requests for him to remove this piece of clothing or tuck that section of hair out of the way.

The beady black eye of the lens seemed to be everywhere. It got up in his bruised face and cracked there like knuckles striking bone. The soft whoosh-clap of instant prints scrolling out reminded him of Odin's wings, keeping time with the persistent circling of the investigating doctor. The dark-skinned, sombre-eyed Montrose of Princeton General was not dissimilar to a raven: the horror movie kind that haunted all the victims. He snapped up every little detail of this moment and fastidiously tucked them into envelopes, pending circulation for review. There would be records of this on data disks, paper and celluloid for the foreseeable future. All Wilson wanted was to forget it had ever happened.

Shying his head to one side as the camera popped again, he looked around for something else to focus on. But his vision too seemed only able to take snapshots of the bland exam room surfaces. According to Foreman, his eyes _were_ tracking properly; but the concussion of his brain colliding with the inside of his skull as it hit the shower wall had disrupted his neurologic function. His attention stuttered off the pale lilac scrubs Chase had found for him before he'd consent to be transported to the E.R. It moved to the plaster cast encasing his right arm from fingertips to elbow. Finally, it settled on the little knob of cotton taped over the inside of his left arm, where the nurse had taken the blood for the HIV and STI tests.

There'd been quite a lot of blood. Most of it had gone now, only the remains were cluttering the steel tray on the wheeled cart to his left. It wasn't moving in that dragging, viscous eddy that proved it was just chocolate sauce, a relic of the old black and white movies, though. It sat there in drying, rusty blotches on cotton balls or distorting into bright herringbone patterns through the sterile white squares of the dressings taped to his chest and right side. Everything looked and felt like a horror movie, but since when did they screen in real time and why couldn't he change the channel?

Montrose set down the camera. The _snick_ of the plastic casing connecting with the countertop made Wilson shift his weight to his elbow and grip his temples with the spread thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The ache inside his head had reached such a peak that everything was insufferably loud. Commonplace actions that he performed unconsciously millions of times every day had somehow acquired volume: the wet click of repeatedly swallowing saliva, the sloughing rasp of air passing in and out of his lungs, even the too frequent swish of his eyelashes, were deafening. As if scrambling to get out of the cacophony, his brain reran its percussive crash against the inside of his skull. It sent his throat into spasm, his stomach heaved and watery bile splattered, obscenely loud, into the third cardboard basin.

"Dr. Wilson?"

The low murmur of the SANE speaking at his elbow was something to focus on. It forced his bruised brain, busy repairing itself, not to neglect the ability to filter sounds. He wiped his mouth gratefully with the proffered cloth and took a sip of cool water from the Dixie cup she passed him. He swilled his mouth out and spat acrid vomit-tinged saliva into the basin, before the nurse whisked it away. He wrapped his fingers around the cup and finished the contents to rehydrate himself.

The woman in _Psycho_ had been lucky. She'd died. No one to make questions of her name, followed by stupid statements or "we need tos." Of course, they needed to. It was procedure. Though if they picked an MRI over the CT scan he was going to find a knife from somewhere and finish the job. He was not, absolutely not, going to lie on a board while magnets slammed into one another inches from his pounding head.

"Dr. Wilson?" The nurse was back.

"Fine. I'm fine."

He spoke too sharply, too swiftly, but he'd said what she wanted, hadn't he? Even though she knew that it wasn't…that it was an abbreviation. He _would be_ fine. Eventually. When he could get House to write him a script for a painkiller stronger than ibuprofen. The irony of it made his mouth twitch, sting, made him swallow a laugh.

"Dr. Wilson?"

Her voice was even gentler, now, as if she'd mistaken the choked sound for a sob. He realised that she was trying to tell him Montrose had returned and was waiting patiently with a set of nail cutters and a scrapings stick in his right hand. They were being oh so careful not to touch him without warning.

_Bang._ _Ker-wallop_. _Bang._ Wilson flinched, the empty cup tumbling to the floor as he grabbed the table to steady himself. The bright hall lights skewered the tactful gloam of the examining room. He screwed up his eyes, peering narrowly at the clomping, lopsided silhouette that barged in, shoving the ricocheting door aside with a _thwack_ of his cane into the panels.

"Aren't you done yet?"

"Dr. House—!"

The nurse's voice broke on the brink of an indignant squeak. House ignored her, clunk-stomping his way across to the other side of the examining table. He jammed his cane into a dip in the floor and scowled across the rumpled ridge of sanitary paper, as if he'd interrupted nothing more than one of Wilson's clinic hours.

"Seriously, I need a consult. New patient with severe stick-up-his-arse psychosis about his wife and daughter trying out the latest fashion in pine boxes and violent tendencies towards oncologists. I'm prescribing a bullet to the back of the skull, what do you think?"

Wilson raised his cast as far as he could and ducked his head behind it, trying futilely to shield his eyes from the storm of rainbow polka dots set off internally by the abrupt change in lighting. His voice sounding distorted by the water still lodged in his ears, he murmured,

"House, shut th'door."

The closed window blinds had partitioned the room off from the rest of the hospital, but with the door open it was apparent that the lobby had developed a thousand eyes in the last half an hour. Cuddy was marshalling rubber necking patients to various floors of the hospital or the exit doors, like a stationmaster conducting recalcitrant traffic in a jam at Clapham Junction. Her efforts were hampered by a number of her staff, who had decided it was now essential to visit to the front desk to ask for messages or to collect a file they hadn't forgotten. The head nurse, Brenda, was fielding those with her usual hard-nosed intimidation. But her stern brown eyes kept twitching toward exam room three and her mouth was bent out of shape with consternation.

Over by one of the enormous poinsettias that had arrived with a donor's quarterly cheque, Chase stood with one hand on his hip and the other towelling distractedly at his damp blond hair. He was speaking to a broad-shouldered police officer, who scribbled busily in a pocket-sized notebook. Cameron, her white lab coat buttoned over her pink E.R. scrubs to hide the stains of Wilson's blood, was talking to another. She was tight-lipped and practically levitating with the urge to rush to the exam room and put another band-aid on Wilson herself. Plunked down with the immovability of an obsidian statue in one of the waiting room chairs, Foreman ignored every one of Cuddy's attempts to get him to leave until he'd wedged Wilson under a scanner somewhere.

One of his own staff, Monica Lucas, a new fellow so fresh out of med school she still spoke as though she'd swallowed a textbook, was bent over her knees crying into her hands. Thirteen was petting the finger-clawed tangle of her long brown hair and trying to persuade her to drink something out of a cardboard vending machine carton. Monica had stepped out to grab everyone a round of coffee a few moments after Wilson had called time of death on Tania Walker, mother of Alicia, at 14.17. He was glad Monica hadn't come with him to the showers, though he was betting that she regretted it.

House's remaining fellows, Taub and Kutner, were busy behind the glass windows of exam rooms one and two. Kutner was studying a blue patient file, while an overweight mother toyed with the reins attached to her plump son. Taub was holding down a goth's tongue with a wooden depressor, his bored expression indicative of a staph infection. Neither had closed the blinds and neither were scheduled for clinic duty. They were transparently useless at standing around, though clearly determined not to be hounded off. Whether they were there for his sake or to restrain House when the police wrested his assailants down in the elevators, Wilson wasn't certain.

He caught sight of the head of psych, intervening on Cuddy's behalf as she looked fit to bawl out an obliviously intolerant clinic patient. Then the head of cardiology – who had managed to get a month's ban from the clinic – appeared via the E.R. doors. Had every single member of staff at Princeton Plainsboro made a beeline for the clinic to gawp at him? Didn't anyone have any patients? Wilson blinked away another zigzag of interference in his vision and looked up to a closed door. House was leaning against it, his hands behind his back and wearing his favourite _whoops-look-what-I-did_ expression.

"Sir, you need to wait _outside._…"

The nurse tailed off uncertainly as the arrhythmic thuds of House's cane looped around her to Wilson's side of the table. Calloused fingers jerked his half-raised arm down, ignored his sharp inhale, and tapped the cast's wrap.

"This is why your ringtone is 'Dancing Queen," House informed him.

"It was all there was left."

Wilson didn't especially care for neon pink either, but he didn't care about much right now. He bowed his head as House's narrowed stare searched him from top to toe, catalogued the split in his lip, the bruises on his jaw, cheekbone and brow, the proximity of the swelling to his temple, checked for blood in his ears, noted the rawness where Cameron had wiped it away from his nose and mouth. He stared uncooperatively at the absorbent paper he was balling in his fist while House tried to peer into his eyes, as if he could see a damn thing without a penlight, and hoped his bruises hid his regenerating blush.

The heat of it made him giddy, made his skin pull taught across his forehead and shoulders. His mouth dried out and his stomach squeezed threateningly. He gulped tensely at little chunks of puke caught in his oesophagus, wanting to avoid doubling over another basin in front of House. He was already embarrassed enough for it to be physically uncomfortable: that hot, stuffy sensation of being claustrophobic in his own skin. His involuntary squirm tweaked at his injuries, triggering a feedback loop of niggling pains, which left him more light-headed than the blush. He hadn't thought he could hurt much more than he already did. No, more than he knew he would. His broken bones and wrenched ligaments hurt already, but in a fuzzy, hot-cold fashion that was not yet part of him. The jangling of adrenaline and the repressive rushes of endorphins were holding the worst of it at bay. When they wore off, he was going to keel over in nine kinds of agony. He was mildly surprised he hadn't in anticipation.

House propped his cane against the edge of the examining table and stalked around him. His nostrils were flared at the scent of pain, sweat, soured breath and the pheromones the body automatically produced, as if it were unfamiliar now that it belonged to someone other than him. With the jerky motions of a puppeteer, he manoeuvred Wilson around so that he could palpate the three cracked ribs beneath his bruised side, wedge his cast back into the flimsy cheesecloth sling to salve his dislocated shoulder and lift his shirt to prod at the bruises blooming near his kidneys. He didn't ask, didn't apologise, didn't give a damn that his former staff had run almost every physical check under the sun and patched him up before they would consent to release him to the Sexual Assault Response Team. Second-hand information was useless as far as House was concerned. He had to maul Wilson himself to be satisfied. He put his fingers where he liked and mentally charted every wince or twitch. Wilson hung his head and bore it, the paper in his fist tearing with his tightening grip.

He resisted only when House tried to unthread the ties to his scrub pants.

"Ho no, House. Not that."

Not again. Once, for the SART, had been quite enough. He'd not been on the receiving end of many of the procedures he carried out on a regular or even occasional basis. He'd been startled by how abrasive and insidious these were. The feel of the dry little cotton swabs probing around his private parts seemed to have got stuck in his head and set off intermittent twitches of sense memory that made him jump. He eyed the plastic boxes of the Sexual Offence Evidence Collection kit uneasily. It looked innocuous, sat on the counter, like something an escapee child from the hospital's crèche might have gathered up from overlooked items scattered around. It was a plastic case with a series of small evidence containers in it, some envelopes, a plastic sample bag for clothing, a paper modesty sheet, a reel of labels, unwaxed dental floss, urine and blood sample jars, a few wooden sticks, glass slides and other assorted medical paraphernalia. It was only two thirds complete.

"Sir." The nurse tried to shoo House off by getting in his way, but ended up prancing to keep her toes out of cane-squashing range. "You can't interfere with the investigation…."

The vigour of her flapping suggested she'd have manhandled him if it weren't for his handicap. The tightening of House's fingers around the waistband of Wilson's borrowed trousers meant he'd noticed and was annoyed by it. It didn't stop him taking advantage.

"You've got what you need," he informed her. "Wilson—"

"_House_."

It came out sounding less forceful and more plaintive than he'd intended. He immediately wondered why he was bothering. House chose never to understand 'no', except when he said it himself. His insistent tugging at the scrub ties continued, one handed. The other shifted and swept a gentle circle over the small of Wilson's back, a brief reassuring pressure. When House reached around him again, Wilson gave in and took his hand off the ties, letting him unfasten his trousers.

"_Dr. House!_"

Objecting on legal principle, no doubt, but some vestige of concern for his patient putting his voice up an outraged octave, Montrose started forward. He stopped short as a rubber cane tip slammed into his chest, barring his way.

"S'okay." Wilson spoke before House could say something belligerent that might have security invading the room. The guards had seen enough for one night. "Let him get it over with. It's his…process."

The nurse gave him a baffled look, though he was sure it made sense. They needed to find things, so that they could prosecute someone. House needed to find things, so that he could fix someone. He tried to elaborate.

"You have a procedure. He has a process." He gestured vaguely with the fingers pinned inside his cast, wondering if they understood…if _he_ understood… He didn't know what he was saying. He focused on the crucial part and said it again. "It's fine."

It wasn't. It wasn't even close. Because he'd been injured, and because he'd been soaked, the SART had been forced to run their tests all out of order. The departure from routine was disorientating. He couldn't remember what was next, whether the worst was over, or if there was more to come. He hadn't expected to have any of it repeated. But if not now, House would accost him later and in a foul temper in case the delay mucked up his results. Wilson slumped lower over the table and let him get on with it. He was already at the pinnacle of humiliation; there was no more to get. He buried his head in his hand and rubbed at the sore place on his scalp where Montrose had plucked a sample of hairs for DNA comparison, while House dug implements out of his jacket pocket and repeated the most essential swabs for another SOEC kit. It was on the tip of Wilson's tongue to tell him it was futile; he'd come round breathing water, with most of the mess and blood washed away down the plughole. But he couldn't be bothered. Let the lab tell him instead.

House pocketed the vials and, with surprising tenderness, refastened his clothing for him. His body hiding it from the other doctors, he skimmed his hand gently down Wilson's aching spine. He tensed because he couldn't help himself, but the casual intrusion was easier to stomach than the SART's cautious invasions. Their quiet, clear, moderated voices and efficient, visible manoeuvres should have been reassuring, but Wilson knew too well the practice that went into cultivating the appearance of calm. Either they'd been dulled to indifference long ago or there was a storm of indignation, involuntary sympathy, and irrepressible intrigue being curbed behind their soothing masks.

Hovering somewhere outside his sore, stiffening body, the doctor part of Wilson felt the same: pissed off, wincing and reflexively curious about the experience of what he'd seen intermittently in his years of medical practice. The rest of him was too exhausted to give a damn. Whichever one of his attackers had given him concussion deserved less of a jail term than the other. He couldn't disintegrate the way the SART obviously feared. He wondered if they were more used to dealing with sobbing women.

It wasn't pride or stoicism or bravery that had kept him from curling up in a ball and quivering until his teeth rattled, though; he was simply too stunned. Reality felt as though it had absconded on an unwarranted vacation and he'd stepped through the locker room door into an alternate universe. That detached, doctor part of him was mentally shaking his head, well aware that the fact this _was_ reality was going to break over him in stages. Then he would be sniffing back snot in his therapist's office and double dosing on whatever new anti-depressants she had lined up, like every other poor sod who'd ever been through this. But he couldn't quite make himself believe that yet. It probably helped that he didn't _want_ to. This stupefied, deflated numbness wasn't pleasant; it was the lesser of two evils.

He was vaguely aware of House's hand on his arm, probably monitoring his pulse rate, and recognised in his scrunched brow that he didn't like Wilson's quietus one bit. Equally abstractly, he thought he ought to be a bit ticked by that. House wouldn't've liked him bawling like a baby either.

"You've got everything," House repeated, brusquely addressing the SART. It sounded like a warning.

"No." Dr. Montrose swiped at the blue ink stain migrating down his white coat from a pen cracked by House's arresting cane. "We have a few more things to do. There are fingernail scrapings to collect, then there are a series of precautionary medications that should be administered, and lastly the pelvic exam."

Shit. There was worse to come. Wilson started as House's hand closed over his in a firm, preventative grip. He realised he'd yanked the sanitary paper off the reel. It was spinning, sticky mechanisms screaming, at the end of the examining table. He let go and the excess paper slumped around him like fragile chains. House released him slowly and went back to badgering Montrose.

"What medications?"

"A shot of ceftriaxone—"

"No. Check his file, you damn fool! He's allergic."

He was? Yes. He was. Good thing House had remembered.

Unphased by the insult, Montrose continued, "Then we can use an oral dose of azithromycin as a precaution against Chlamydia and Gonorrhea." He reached pointedly for Wilson's medical file and scanned it. "He's vaccinated against Hep B, we're testing for C, and I'm going to recommend putting him on a four-week HIV preventative regime."

He set down the file and Wilson felt serious dark blue eyes shift over him, waiting for a reaction. What was he supposed to do, argue? Given what they thought had happened, it sounded perfectly sensible.

With a slight shake of his head, Montrose went on, "Once all of that is finished, your Dr. Foreman is waiting outside. The CT has been booked to make absolutely certain that Dr. Wilson has no haematomas, haemorrhages or contusions. With an assault of this severity, certainly physical and possibly sexual, a full body scan wouldn't be too cautious."

"He's walking, he's talking, he's fine," House retorted.

Montrose gave him a look that implied he was the damn fool. "It took him five tries to remember his name."

"That's because it was a stupid question. He knows his name. He's wearing a badge with it on."

Actually, it was Chase's name.

"He was repeating himself."

"Because you weren't answering _his_ questions."

And _he_ was the cat's grandfather now?

"House," Wilson interrupted wearily. "Arguing is only going to prolong this."

"Listen to the man with the concussion," Montrose suggested, annoyance sheathed behind fixed civility. "Or I may recommend a sharp blow to _your_ head as essential to this investigation."

House looked over at Wilson, his head tilted questioningly.

"Go." He waggled his fingers within the cast.

"The police want a statement."

"I know. _Go._"

House didn't. Short of physically removing the man armed with a metre of wood topped with a metal serpent, the Princeton General SART couldn't do much but carry on around him or have him arrested. Out of deference, Wilson suspected, to himself, House kept his provocations to the minimum. He prowled around the room, demanding the specifics of the medication regime and snatched up the paper bag full of bottles when the SANE brought them over from the pharmacy. He got up in Montrose's face when he tried to remind him that he wasn't the one who needed to take control of them, but Wilson's involuntary laugh startled the glares off their faces.

"Assault one-oh-one," he explained hoarsely, wondering why it wasn't blindingly obvious to both of them that House was wrestling to get some sort of grip on the situation. "He can take charge of the meds."

Montrose glanced between them, his forehead crinkling in obvious concern that Wilson didn't want to handle his own medication. House went the other way. The skin whitened around his flaring nostrils, as he reached for the pill bottle in his pocket and threw back two Vicodin. He made a sound part way between a snort and a snarl, chomped on the tablets to stop himself erupting and set off pacing again like something cornered. When he didn't hurl the bag onto the table and thunder out with a slam of the door, Wilson settled himself on the edge of the examining bench to wait out the rest of the procedure with a shivery kind of triumph. Wherever House had been whilst Cameron was staging a coup and making the police department wait in line for their results, he wasn't able to disappear off to hide in a lab somewhere for the rest of this damnable evening.

Both House and the triumph stopped when the paper sheet came out and the nurse took Wilson's scrubs away from him. She pulled off all the ruined sanitary paper, spread fresh over the examining bench, and helped Wilson steady himself, bent over it. House parked himself stubbornly on the visitor's chair with his legs in the way and started up his Gameboy. Wilson tried to concentrate on the little yips it made and not on Montrose's slicked, rubber-gloved fingers, but he couldn't. The scene was replaying itself again. He tucked his head down against his good shoulder, gritted his teeth and tried not to recognise the screams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two:**

It had stopped raining when they finally released him. It seemed inappropriate, somehow, that the evening air should have a damp refreshed quality when Wilson's last drenching had left him feeling like he'd showered in a combination of manure and battery acid. The star-speckled lilac sky matched some of his better bruises, though. Huddled in House's long overcoat and a second set of scrubs he'd had to borrow from Foreman, he slunk across the tarmac like an amateur spy, harbouring some half-cocked notion that he'd be able to sneak up on his car without his body noticing he was moving. He placed the ball of each foot on the ground and lowered the heel with exaggerated caution, suddenly able to appreciate House's obsession with sneakers. The soles of his polished French loafers offered no absorption of the percussion.

If he'd been thinking straight he might have accepted a wheelchair ride, at least as far as the parking lot. It was standard transport for all patients being discharged. But it had seemed important to prove that he could walk out under his own power. The SART hadn't wanted him to be released. Neither had Foreman, though the CTs of his head and kidneys had come back clean. Fortunately sympathy won out over sense and Cuddy authorised it, albeit reluctantly. It was on the proviso that if he wouldn't be monitored for forty-eight hours in the hospital, with bed rest, fluids and Tylenol, then House had better swear on pain of six months clinic hours that he'd oversee it at Wilson's home.

"Why, Cuddy," House had riposted, teeth bared, "When we have sleepovers, we _always_ play doctors and nurses."

It was, Wilson had discovered, possible to cringe _more_ than when police-appointed medical vultures were doing rectal swabs.

They'd shared a ride in, so the Volvo was parked in House's designated disabled bay, less than thirty feet from the main entrance. House hit the key button to open the doors and waited as Wilson contemplated the logistics of getting into the passenger seat. Whilst his left side was functional and, though bruised, both his legs were working, he fancied he could actually see the world rotating on its axis and the effect was making him dizzy. Plus, with his right out of commission, he didn't have enough hands to hold onto both the car and his ribs at the same time. Shit. This was going to hurt.

Rather than risk ducking, he bent his knees and started to hollow his back, but froze with his lower lip seized between his teeth when his temperamental lumbar group locked up in protest. A flaring surface ache from a bruise and a clunk of vertebrae reminded him that he'd been shoved into the shower's tap and dial mechanisms. Whatever uninvestigated condition had previously been causing his lower spine to subluxate, it didn't appreciate the extra abuse.

"So. Sex is off the cards for a few days, then?"

House's pointed provocation cut through his deliberating. Straightening up, Wilson resisted the temptation to check the newly cracked face of his waterproof watch. It had been five hours and thirteen minutes, if the clock over the main doors had been right. House had just scored a personal best on how long he could go without saying something inappropriate. Of course he'd gone for the mother of all tasteless comments to make up for it. A half-glance showed that he had his chin propped on the top of the passenger door. There was a glittering in his stare that Wilson didn't like one bit, a kind of combative goading that dared him to lash out, to do something, _anything_, other than hold himself together. He baulked at the urge to brace his fist against the doorframe, butt his head into the crook of his own arm, and whisper something – _anything_, in fact – that would make House not do this now.

Instead, he squared his good shoulder and met snark with snark.

"I didn't hear you ask the SANE to pick up your Viagra script. Don't start, House – seriously – or you can go back to being your own best friend."

Well, _that_ ought to stop him. Horrified, Wilson replayed the words as white flashed around House's irises, like the reflexive waving of a peace flag. The fall-out from Amber's death, only a little over a year ago, had nearly decimated their longstanding, co-dependent, push-me-pull-you friendship. They were still navigating a minefield of hard words and hurt feelings associated with it and remarks like that weren't going to help any. He looked away and House down, both struggling, once again, to shrug off what they could forgive but not really forget.

When Wilson stopped contemplating the metallic Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital lettering, inset into the decorative brick wall on the half-moon lawn at the front of the lot, House was fixated on the car keys. He jiggled them in his palm as if he were considering dropping them at Wilson's feet and abandoning him there. Of the two, Wilson knew he was the deserter, not House; but he hadn't meant it as an exit line. He'd been trying to make a joke, a double entendre, not haul a rancorous mess out of the past to add to the afternoon's wretchedness.

He opened his mouth to take it back, but that wasn't what emerged: "You can drop me at home if you're going to be an ass. I can't deal with you _and _this tonight."

House closed his fist on the keys. Shoving the paper pharmacy bag at Wilson with a clatter of vials, he gimp-stepped around to the other side of the car and pulled the driver's door open, as if he intended to do just that. His face slack with disbelief, mostly at himself, Wilson peered over the roof, that disarming urge to crumple creeping up on him again. He let his breath out raggedly, but didn't dare speak in case he said something worse. It was House who took a grip on the roof edge and glared at him across the residual raindrops shivering on the dull gold paint.

"Can't," he informed him, with bitter satisfaction. "Clinic duty."

"I won't tell Cuddy."

What was _wrong_ with him? It would serve him right if House did leave him to get a cab home alone.

House scoffed. "The EMTs will, when your neighbours find you unconscious on your doormat."

"I share a block with a bunch of co-eds," Wilson tried. There. That was better. Or at least _civil_. "I'd've been dead long enough for the landlord to call a fumigation company before they'd notice anything was wrong."

Ho, no, it _wasn't_. House's skin seemed to shrink and tauten over his bones, the very idea making him age before Wilson's eyes. He'd _run_ into the locker room a few hours ago, cane flung aside at the door. Chase couldn't've been too discerning about the page he'd sent. Knowing damn well what it was like to find his best friend unconscious on the floor, Wilson pulled his left hand up and scrubbed at his eyes, as if he could rub the desolate look off his retinas and off House's face too.

"Sorry. I'm sorry."

At least that word still sounded like it should. He'd put House through enough today without shooting off at the mouth. Wilson lowered his hand cautiously, not sure what expression was on his face but trusting it wasn't anything else he didn't mean. House considered him for a few seconds, then tipped his head with a half-shrug that wasn't so much forgiveness as the suggestion that he'd deserved it. He _had_ started it, but that wasn't the same thing. Biting his cheek to avoid making it any worse, Wilson let it stand. After a heartbeat, House beckoned across the roof to take back the pills, so that Wilson could work himself painfully into the passenger seat.

He managed it, but it left him breathless and the mirror in the lowered sun-visor showed he'd gone green around the gills. He sagged into the padded leather and had to quell a sudden shakiness brought on by the way the seat moulded around him, as if it were an embrace. House shot him a sharp-eyed, penetrating stare, but Wilson ducked away from it, convinced he'd exposed himself enough for one day, and turned his body toward the door. The twist in his torso ground the edges of his fractured ribs together. He clamped his lips closed and the gasp exploded through his nose.

"Oy vey."

House added an irritated throaty sound for emphasis and prodded his shoulder. Wilson glanced around in time to catch the Vicodin flipping over the centre console. He rattled the contents of the amber vial about habitually and made House snort. He'd assumed he was counting them.

"Nine today. You were right about needing the Viagra."

"Don't really care about your drug habit right now."

It might be the first time in history he was actually grateful for it. The ibuprofen and Tylenol combo hadn't even taken the edge off how much he was starting to hurt and it was all downhill from here. Shaking out one of the ten-milligram tablets, he swallowed it with the last of the bottled water left in the central cup holder. House rolled his eyes and snagged his pills back. One was paracetamol, as far as he was concerned.

He started the engine and, using his left foot to manoeuvre the automatic's pedals, set course through the tree-lined campus streets toward Amber's place.

"I'll cancel New York."

"No." Wilson shut his eyes against the strobing of headlights, streetlights, shop neons and stars. He'd been saying that word a lot today. _No_ and _I'm sorry_. He shouldn't've bothered. No one listened. "It took me five months to talk you into this trip. You're not getting out of it."

"I'm not—?"

House broke off with an inarticulate snarl that snapped Wilson's eyes open. He had time to think, _oh gawd, not now_, before House exploded, seething.

"You _idiot!_" he snapped, casting Wilson a look equivalent to a smack upside the head. "Where did you get your medical degree from – the Unseen University? Take all your classes in room 3b? Get any knowledge you had sucked out and absorbed by the walls?"

Much too late, Wilson realised he'd planned on keeping his mouth shut until he remembered how to think before he spoke. House had been on the cusp of a royal hissy fit from the second he'd skidded to his knees on the changing room floor and that flip remark had tipped him over. Rationally, Wilson knew that he was lashing out, that, however misdirected, House's outrage at the whole situation had nowhere else to go. But the words still socked him in the gut, dual body blows of hurt and disappointment that he couldn't contain himself, that, even now, he couldn't manage to rustle up some modicum of empathy. It wasn't as though he didn't know what being in pain felt like.

"Thanks," he said, staring at the wet drops still clinging to the windshield from the earlier rainfall. "You know that unconditional support that's usually recommended in these situations? I don't need it. I'm fine."

"_Yeeaah_," House strained the word out to breaking point. "You're happy, happy, happy."

He stamped on the gas pedal and the car sped up with a lurch that made Wilson's already upset stomach heave.

"You should watch more TV. _Fine_ is an acronym for fucked-up, insecure, neurotic and emotional." He shot a spiky, sidelong glance in Wilson's direction and added, "Diagnostically accurate, but not what you meant. If you're that desperate for a vacation, we'll go check into the hotel up the road. Or you can. You don't have to risk brain damage trekking all the way to New York just to avoid spending a weekend stuck in the apartment with me."

"Yes, I forgot. How silly of me. Whenever I get assaulted, it's all about you."

Wilson rolled his eyes and looked away from the windshield, blinking when it didn't immediately get rid of the rain spots. He hadn't expected House to hold his hand and tell him that he was okay. If he had, he'd've been demanding to see his chart for proof that whatever his attackers had done to him wasn't terminal. He didn't really know how he'd expected House to respond. Since he probably could have patented his inability to deal with emotional situations, picking a fight probably should have been listed in the top ten. It wasn't what Wilson wanted, but he wasn't too clear on what that was. Beyond tired and in no mood to figure out his own psyche, let alone the cross between David Bowie's and the Minotaur's labyrinth that passed for House's, he shut his eyes again and pressed deeper into the seat. The leather was warming as the built-in heaters began to work. It was nice, half-surrounded in a snug clasp, even if it was only stuffed dead cow skin.

House's jaw worked for a few seconds, as he considered and discarded several possible responses to Wilson's sarcasm, probably as too mild.

"You don't want to go," he asserted. "You're fixating on this pointless trip to deflect from whatever emotional crap is going on inside your stupid cracked skull, because you don't want to deal with it—"

No, he didn't. And, as unusual as it was for House to waste his breath stating the obvious, it was easier to get pissed about his attitude problem than surrender to the shakiness that was starting up as the heater melted away the numbness holding him together. Wilson reared up off the seat, seizing onto the outburst with a resentful gratitude.

"God, House, you really are a genius! Except you haven't figured out that the reason _you're_ picking a fight is _also_ a deflection. It's simpler for you than worrying about me. If I can still yell at you, then there's no reason to, is there? I can't go catatonic with shock or hang on your shoulder and cry!"

House met that with a look that was far too mild to be safe.

"Drowning is one of your kinks now, is it? Have at."

The sensation of water swarming over his face, into his nose and mouth and lungs, made Wilson inhale sharply, just to know he could. That accidentally converted the emotional ouch into a crunching pain in his ribs. He cinched his good arm around himself, holding them in place, and fell silent, trying to disguise the compulsion to take a series of deep breaths. House pressed the advantage.

"Don't bounce this off on me, you wus—" Unexpectedly, he cut himself off and changed tack. "Getting the crap kicked out of you is fair grounds for a rain-check! You got attacked by a patient's family!"

His stupid cracked skull banging worse than before, Wilson decided that a yelling match _wasn't_ the better option. He cradled his brow in his palm and struggled to shut it down.

"Two patients."

House growled something incoherent. "You got—"

"_Don't._" Wilson interrupted, glaring across the dimly lit interior of the car. "You're going to try browbeating me into staying home with a crude retelling of what happened and it won't work. You don't know what happened. _I_ don't know what happened and I was there."

"You know," House accused him.

Wilson shifted his glower to the side window, mentally bitch-slapping pedestrians to calm himself down. Since the odds weren't in his favour that House would shut up any time soon, he needed to channel the interrogation into something constructive, not a wrathful re-running of Foreman's nero exam. In a coldly clinical tone, he countered:

"I know I have a closed, oblique fracture of the distal ulna; an anterior subluxation of the right gleohumeral joint; incomplete fractures of the fifth, sixth and seventh anterior ribs, boot prints on my back, scrapes all down one side, a split lip, bruised cheekbone, a hairline linear skull fracture and a concussion. I know I don't have internal bleeding, ruptured organs, or damage to my spine. I know that the cleaning staff don't scrub the grout between the floor tiles, that Chase's hair is long enough to clog the drain, and that no one has fixed the lock on the staff changing room door even though it's been broken for six _fucking_ months!" He breathed out heavily, fighting off another replay. "I also know that security apparently let family into private areas."

"They're fixing the lock now," House informed him unkindly. "Maintenance will be on it as soon as the Forensics team has finished."

Wilson spat out a humourless sound and clenched his jaw to stop anything bitter and self-pitying following it. House glanced at him, the shadows between the lights criss-crossing his face. He looked hollow and ragged, strung out on sleepless nights, an impossible case, too many and still too few painkillers, and now this. But, revved up on puzzles, caffeine and fury, he was in a hell of a lot better shape than Wilson was.

"What happened?"

"I don't know."

"What happened?"

"I don't know."

"What happened?"

"I. Don't. Know."

"What happened? What happened? What happened, what happened, whathappened, whathappenedwhathappenedwhat—"

"God, House! Will you _shut up!_"

"_What. Happened?_"

There was a venom to it that hadn't been there before. House's eyes flashed away from the road, artic blue in the white flare of a streetlight. A fine trembling had started in his fingers, as though he were jonesing harder for a fix for this than he ever did for his Vicodin. Five hours and he was hooked. He'd be up half the night hounding the lab technicians and harassing everyone who'd been in the vicinity before, during and after Wilson had retreated to the shower to scrub off the remains of a split bag of morphine and a dislodged catheter's dribbling all over his socks. One way or another, House would get together enough evidence to figure out exactly what had gone on in the half hour Wilson had told him he couldn't remember. Then he'd turn himself into six feet of unshaven, crumpled-shirted, cane waving, rash until he'd either made Wilson better or killed him trying. As much as it felt like a verbal pummelling, it was sort of touching.

"I don't know," Wilson repeated, a little more gently. "That's what partial retrograde amnesia means. I don't remember anything after my face got introduced to the floor."

"I went to med school too," House grumbled, but not as though his heart was in it.

His eyes had taken on a far away glaze that meant he was wrapped up in a differential on the missing time frame. With a small smile hidden by his hand, Wilson propped his aching cheek against the cold glass window. Rather than risk distracting him, he let House have the last word.

*

The clouds had congealed over the stars and an irresolute static settled inside the car by the time House pulled up outside Amber's apartment. He cracked the ratchets on the parking brake and stared unseeing in the direction of a beggar picking mould off bread discarded for the pigeons. Evidently, he hadn't yet reached a conclusion that fit.

Knowing he could well sit there, preoccupied, until morning, Wilson reached over to the right with his left hand, biting his tongue to gate out the sharp pain through his side as he groped for the door catch. The awkward position made him fumble and knock his hand against the chrome insert panel. The _tock_, and his inevitable wince, pulled House out of his musing.

His thoughts doing a one-eighty from wherever else they'd been, he said, "You won't be fit to travel by tomorrow."

"Yes, I will."

Wilson spoke with a conviction he didn't feel. In the fifteen minutes it had taken to get from the hospital to the apartment, the pain had escalated to such a pitch that he was chewing his tongue to keep from whimpering.

"You're in shock," House pointed out. "It's going to wear off."

It already was. Before it capitulated completely, Wilson wanted to get inside and find the off switch to the day. He suspected it was in the bottle of Ambien bagged between House's bony knees.

He said flatly, "We're going to New York."

House was silent. There was no chance he'd given in.

"It won't work phoning the twins to cancel," Wilson guessed, letting go of the door with a sigh of resignation. "I've told Megumi and Takito not to take your word for anything."

"This even the singing surgeons will believe."

"Not from you."

Ah, _damn._ How hard could it be to think, _then_ speak?

"Hohhhh," House growled. He wedged the heels of his hands against the steering wheel and straightened his arms, pinning himself against the seat back as though he wanted out of the car, the conversation, and probably the relationship too at this moment. "You're auditioning for bitch of the year tonight, aren't you? Or have you finally found a Vegas queen persona that matches your _fah_-ha-bulous bisexuality?"

"I don't think you'll have any trouble defending your crowns."

_Shit._ Hunkering back into the cooling clasp of the seat, Wilson gouged at his forehead with his knuckles in frustration. He seemed to be playing pantomime with his own thought processes, his higher reasoning powers relegated to the ranks of an audience spouting scripted boos and hisses, as some show he wasn't even part of made a ventriloquist's dummy out of his mouth.

"Sorry, sorry. I don't know what I'm saying."

"Yeah. Not loving the Phineas Gage impersonation, buddy. Stick to your day job as the mild mannered saviour of little bald kids."

"House, I've just apologised! What do you want me to do, cry?" _Oh for…_ Wilson dragged his hand down over his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to hurt, and added: "Again, sorry."

"Forget it," House said tersely. "Mood swings are standard fare for MTBIs. Figured you've got some kind of brain damage already. It's been five and a half hours and you haven't started hyper-rationalising this into a form of cosmic scale balancing yet."

Oh-_hoh_. Now they came to it. Suddenly, he didn't feel quite so guilty. House had been timing how long it took for him to admit the assault was his fault. Which meant _he_ thought it was too.

"I _should_ be, should I?"

Concussion or not, House had never pulled his punches before. No reason to start now. But instead of taking his cue to tell Wilson in detail how much of an idiot he'd been, House heaved a dramatic sigh and flopped his head sideways against the seat-rest. He looked as dog-tired as Wilson felt.

"Oh, don't throw yourself a pity party," he groaned. "Bad things happen. They happen to good people, to bad people, to morally indifferent people. I didn't say that there _was_ any karmic validity to it. I said I thought you'd try to _make_ some. Or let the feral family off the hook somehow. Instead Mr. Chatty has just been crowned King of De Nile."

The accompanying Egyptian accent was rather impressive. Nonetheless, Wilson snorted.

"Well, sorry to go all Richard III on you. I didn't realise you'd become such a conversationalist."

"I haven't. Just curious as to why you all of a sudden aren't."

"I'm tired. I'm concussed—"

"You're repressing."

Why ask if the question was rhetorical? Wilson cast him an exasperated look and said without any hope of being heeded, "Let it go, House."

"Okay."

Wilson swung his head around too fast. When the car stopped spinning, House had hoisted his feet out of the driver's footwell. Wilson took one look at his own vomit and threw up a second time. He was sick again and again, finally finishing half hanging out of the passenger side, with House holding the door open and one rough hand on his forehead, keeping his hair out of his eyes. Shaking, Wilson leaned against the doorframe. He swiped away the water leaking out of his eyes, channel hopping between the see-sawing pavement view and another replay.

When it finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and asked sceptically, "_Okay?_"

House palmed his hair once more and quickly pocketed his hand, as if he thought he'd done something he shouldn't. Studying an uninteresting smear of city grime on the Volvo's wing mirror, he said:

"You've got until Monday. We'll shut up, go inside, sleep, and tomorrow I'll drive you to New York. You can have the whole weekend to play make believe and pretend that nothing happened – if you can. On Monday…"

He plucked something out of his shirt pocket and flapped it at Wilson. He took the business card, though he knew he'd never use it. He had a shrink and he had House to psychoanalyse him from an armchair; he didn't need a third. Since he didn't want House to find out that it _was_ a third, he stuffed the card into the pocket of the overcoat.

"Okay. Fine. I'll book an appointment."

Montrose must have given it to House before he left the clinic. Doubtless he'd been concerned when Wilson had shied out of an option to wait for the results of the SOEC kit. Montrose hardly had any place to object. PGH handled the most of the region's SART work for Princeton Police Department and consequently had sufficient backlog that there was at least a month's delay on processing. The odds of finding out whether there was a hit on any of the standard seminal protein markers, let alone DNA match, was slim to none anyway. As the majority of unlucky people who got tested knew what had gone on, it was primarily because Wilson had said he couldn't remember anything that had spurred House into ordering Princeton Plainsboro to run its own tests, including the necessary blood work for STIs. A few unnamed lab gophers would have a long night, but he'd trust the results more for being handled immediately by people he could harangue into excessive caution than those with the evidence stowed elsewhere and processed by another hospital's idiots. House had a kind of inter-hospital xenophobia when it came to, well, anything that he hadn't delegated himself. And patience was not his forte.

Wilson contemplated his friend's solemn countenance for a few seconds, wondering what had made him agree to wait for even a few days. He didn't do anything without at least four convoluted motivations, although this time he couldn't imagine what any of them were. It made him doubt whether House had relented after all. He made a mental note to kill him if the bastard called the lab before then and sprang him with a commentary when he wasn't expecting it. It was the sort of shock, on-the-spot reaction he'd find interesting. On the other hand, if he could restrain himself, then Monday was hours away. It was eighty-four hours and seventeen minutes away, in fact. There was nothing wrong with Wilson that couldn't wait that long. He'd checked.

"Come on," House said gruffly, nudging the side of Wilson's foot with his toe. "I can't carry you indoors. Cripple."

"Yeah, I'm coming." He didn't move though. He sat there examining his spit and bile curdling in the puddle under the running board. Only half conscious of doing it, he touched the card through the coat pocket. In a desperate effort to downplay the whole fiasco so that he stood some chance of getting to sleep tonight, he said, "Whatever happened, it's over. I'm not pregnant. It doesn't really make any difference now."

House drew a long, hissing, give-me-strength breath and let it out in a longer, rattling sigh.

"Sooo not your therapist," he complained. But his put-upon expression slumped into something approximating sympathy and he agreed, "No. You're right. It's what happens _next._"

Yeah. Wilson supposed that _would_ make a difference. To the dosage of his antidepressants, to his sex life and very likely to his career. He'd got himself into one hell of a mess that was for sure, far worse than any of the times he'd got himself arrested in the past. He scrubbed his knuckles into his forehead, nudged a bruise, and shut his eyes hastily as the minor ache stole down behind them and his vision started to dissolve into a stinging blur. House's sneakers did a little hop-shuffle on the sidewalk as he shifted uncomfortably. Wilson swiped his hand down his face and pulled himself together.

"Need to get the car valeted," he said, to spare them both any more uncomfortable introversion.

"Could just get a new car." House glanced at him, sighed. "I thought I was the possessive one. Sort it out tomorrow."

Nodding gratefully, Wilson heaved himself out of the seat. He shut the door on the ruined interior and eyed the gap between the curb and his front door with a sinking sense of dismay. It wasn't more than six steps, but it might as well have been six miles. Then there were five up. Two strides between the front door and his door. The fifteen to his bedroom were definitely going to be a problem. Twenty-eight in all. He managed seven before he fell on his knees.

"Stiiiill can't carry you. Seriously, Wilson, get up. There's a sweeper cart coming down the sidewalk."

House grabbed a handful of his coat, lifting bodily with his left hand. With no leverage to speak of, it should've been an empty gesture, but the fabric tautened vertically and the seams put pressure on Wilson's injured shoulder. He swore and had to sit on the steps. He cradled his broken arm to his chest, head hanging and breath coming in pants. House perched beside him, right leg outstretched, kneading his infarction scar through his trousers abstractedly. His attention was not on the sweeper cart as it rumbled past their feet.

"It's a two hour drive to New York."

"Drive being the operative. I don't have to walk there."

"Have to walk back to the car."

Even that looked like it could take hours.

"Not right this second."

One of Wilson's more expensive neighbours passed them on the steps. A fleeting glimpse took in only his dishevelled appearance, his cantankerous companion. She assumed he was drunk, sniffed and stalked on. Wilson had to put his hand out quickly to stop House tripping her off her Louboutin heels with his cane.

If he could do that, he could get up. He got a good grip on the railing and hauled himself to his feet. House moved quickly by comparison. His vigorous hobbling held a lot of lingering anger that was doing a better job at quenching his pain than his narcotics, but some miracle of unknown self-control was keeping it firmly battened down. He got the main door open, then Wilson's own, then kept between him and open spaces, barricading him between his own body and the walls, until Wilson could collapse onto his bed. He tried not to think about how he must look. Not only did machismo generally prohibit such blatant displays of concern, but if House was prepared to take a shot at catching him, he must've looked in worse danger of toppling off the vertical than the man with a bum leg and glorified twig propping him up.

House watched him toe his shoes off, frowning, and motioned toward the en-suite.

"You don't want to wash?"

"No." Wilson pulled the bedcovers over himself without bothering to take off House's coat and raised the spectre of an unhappy smile. "I've had enough of water for tonight."

Sounding ansty, House tried again. "A drink?"

"You think a hangover's going to cure me?" Wilson squinted at him, puzzled by at House's sudden transformation into a home care nurse, then figured he just needed an excuse not to watch as Wilson writhed around trying to find a comfortable position. He must have left his Gameboy in the clinic. "Tea, if you're getting it."

House curled his lip. "Tea is for Brits. Are you sure you know where you are?"

He stumped out anyway and a moment later Wilson heard him clunking around in the kitchen, probably pretending he couldn't find the tea, though there was plenty of it. He liked tea. He'd had an English girlfriend in high school. He'd cheated, of course, because some other girl cried on his shoulder and he'd been in a flurry of panic about falling in love. He'd been indiscriminately dropping his pants as an emotional crutch since practically his first sex-ed class. No wonder he'd been fated to end up as the thrice-divorced half of the Odd Couple – the one with fashion sense, good haircuts and a fondness for small dogs. He was as infamous for being PPTH's finest panty peeler as he was renown for being its – to quote House – top tumournator. Why was he surprised that even his patients took advantage of that?

"Fuck. _Fuck!_"

Suddenly so angry he couldn't see straight, Wilson lashed out. He hit his nightstand and sent books, a lamp, a framed photograph and his alarm clock flying. His good hand burst into a bloom of brilliant pain and he threw up again, flashes of light going off behind his eyes. House clattered back into the doorway, eyebrows drawn together as if he'd been expecting this.

"I see we've skipped bargaining and gone straight to anger. Maybe these new age chakra cleansers have something after all." His frown deepened as he came close enough to see Wilson's face in the dimness. "Or is this depression?"

Wilson hid behind by the pillowcase he was using to wipe his mouth. "I bargained for New York, didn't I?"

House dug at the carpet with his cane tip and huffed, "You're running the five stages into each other."

"I'm not dying!"

"Then quit it with the amateur melodrama! That's my department."

House plonked down on the edge of the bed and reached for Wilson's hand. He flinched as his fingers were straightened, bent, wiggled.

"Nothing broken."

"Nothing _else_."

House let go and passed him the icepack he'd brought from the freezer, wrapped up in a dishtowel. Clumsily, Wilson pressed it over the new bruising on his knuckles. The cold made his teeth chatter, which made his head hurt, which made the room spin. He threw up again, into the waste bin, the rawness of his throat and the crashing waves of agony in his head making his eyes stream. House gave him the dishtowel to mop his face, got a glass of mouthwash and a bath towel from the en-suite. He put the bath towel over the mess on the floor and made Wilson wash his mouth out. Dumping the ruined towels and the glass into the bin, he tossed it all out of the window. It clanged in the dumpsters below.

"Get in."

House pushed him none too gently back against the mattress, stuffed enough clean pillows behind his head to keep him propped up and twitched the covers into place. He used his cane to drag another waste bin out of the bathroom and parked it by the nightstand. Retrieving the photograph and alarm clock from under the wardrobe, he set the clock for an hour's time.

"Lie on your side, so you don't aspirate it if you puke in your sleep. And don't forget to reset the alarm when you wake up."

He straightened and made for the door. Wilson rose cautiously on one elbow.

"Where are you going?"

"You need fluids. I'm not doing six months of clinic hours, even for you."

The juggling act with the unstackable mugs, door and cane was worth keeping his eyes open. He sat up and tried to help House unload, but the joints in the hand he'd hit the nightstand with felt loose and clattery. He fumbled uselessly until House swatted him away and passed him a green mug. Cupping his aching hand around the base, he breathed in the rising steam.

"This isn't tea."

"Tea's a diuretic." House perched on the edge of the mattress, suppressing a grimace as he took his weight off his bad leg. "You're dehydrated. Also that bin is wicker and I can't lug your ass to the bathroom to pee."

Oh-kay. That made sense. Wilson sipped and spluttered at the saccharine dilution of his favourite Belgian formula.

"You added sugar! It's hot chocolate, House. It—"

"Combats shock. If you can't keep it down, I'm taking you back to the hospital and hitching you to an IV line."

House laid the back of his hand against Wilson's forehead, gauging his temperature.

"Page Cuddy for one and set it up here." Wilson waved the hand off distractedly and flinched as even that small movement made his whole body hurt. Recoiling into the pillow nest, he said firmly, "I'm done moving."

He was vaguely aware, as he swigged the chocolate, that it tasted funny. House had brought him a drink that morning, which also hadn't been quite right. Either there was something wrong with his taste buds that preceded hitting his head on the wall or he was being dosed. It took a few swallows to deduce that the graininess wasn't only sugar. It was crushed sleeping pills. He drank the rest as if he hadn't noticed.

The Ambien acted fast, shutting down most of his higher brain functions as smoothly as if they were a series of doors. He eyed the last few sips of hot chocolate woozily and decided swallowing was altogether too much hard work. He pushed the cup away beside the alarm clock and slumped into the pile of blankets and pillows cushioning his sore body. The familiar quiet of the apartment, punctuated only by the ticks of the heating system, the soft murmur of upstairs' television, and the intermittent swoosh of passing traffic outside, was soothing. He closed his eyes and, with the soporific shutting off his memory too, this time the faint impressions of the furnishings left on his retinas blurred into welcoming darkness.

The edge of the mattress dipped and rose. The click of House's cane came from a long way off. Muzzy, more than half way to sleep, Wilson blinked and reopened his eyes to the charcoal dimness. House was sloping through the door, one hand holding it steady so that the hinges wouldn't creak.

"Where are you—?"

"Out here." House rubbed his right thigh as if he'd been wanting to for some time. "I'll sleep on the couch, check in on you every hour."

Only briefly, in the parking lot, had Wilson even considered that might be what he wanted. But, to the astonishment of everyone except – for reasons he couldn't fathom – his therapist and Blythe, his life worked better for having House in it. Wilson studied him anxiously, wondering why he wouldn't at least drag the reclining chair in from the lounge. House had been sitting guard since he stormed the exam room, come cops, Cuddy, hell and high water. What had changed since they left the hospital?

Sweat broke out under his arms as he tried to think. Little bursts of adrenaline fired and faded, fighting the soporific to rally his lethargic pulse. His limbs felt like wet sandbags, heavy and unwieldy as he began to sit up.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." House swung back toward the bed, blocking his effort to rise with the heel of his hand against his good shoulder. "Thought you were done moving?"

So had he. But, as he glanced between House and the door he'd been about to leave through, he realised he'd screwed up worse than he'd thought. In a low, ragged voice that didn't sound like his own, he said:

"You're leaving me."

"I'm leaving the room."

"Yeah..."

Wilson kept his attention on the place House's hand had been after he'd shifted it to his cane top. He could let that be what he'd meant, until Monday. Even though the leaden dread settling into the pit of his stomach didn't believe it.

"Anything else would be redundant," House said, in the slow, reluctant tone of one pointing out something obvious and disagreeable.

Without the Ambien fogging everything up, Wilson might have recognised the complexity of emotion that House was trying to hide: the shock and cynicism, anger and hurt that had been building since he'd heard about the attack and intensified during their spat in the parking lot. But he misunderstood and presumed behind the lack of expression only bitterness and disappointment. A single thought surfaced from the muddy eddy his consciousness had become:

"You think I cheated, don't you?"

It was, after all, the most logical conclusion. The second assailant had been right about that. His track record, quite frankly, sucked. Even his vaunted professional ethics had been known to bend to the well-meaning whims of his cock. Two out of his three marriages had ended over his inability to keep his zipper closed. After his misconduct with Grace, he wondered, in House's mind, how much difference there was between that and this situation.

"Yeah, that's right," House drawled, flatly ironic. "You had a great time. Can't wait to do it again."

Wilson met his eyes bleakly. "I don't know. I told you that. I don't _remember._"

House touched his fingertips to the purpling splotch on Wilson's jaw. "Pretty sure you didn't RSVP to this party."

Wilson shook his head to dislodge House's fingers, recoiling from the pain inherent in prodding a bruise, and half-shrugged wretchedly. There _were_ things he could have done to avoid inviting it. He could've handled the case differently, instead of fluffing Alicia's diagnosis like every other specialist she'd seen and screwing up Tania's last few days by making her pick out a small, Barbie-pink coffin. He could've called a round-table consult with all the hospital's specialists for the little girl. He could've searched the whole country for another clinical trial for Tania. He could've handled her medications himself, instead of delegating it to the specialist nurse: central lines were notoriously tricky, whatever their benefits. The skyscrapers of paperwork in his office could've waited while he did it. And there should've…could've..._must've_ been something he could have said or done differently that would have allowed the family the peace to simply say their goodbyes. He'd had people take a swing at him for having to hand out a death sentence before; he'd never left anyone so upset that they'd tracked him down to beat him to a pulp. He'd failed them.

Too shaken up be ashamed of himself for needing not to be alone with his conscience right now, he said quietly, "Then stay."

House shot him a look akin to a foot shuffle, his face rumpled into lines of uncertainty and irritation about it. He shook his head automatically.

"No."

Wilson fisted the covers and tried not to care that he was digging for new vaults of humiliation. No more up to go, but there was plenty more down.

"Why not?"

"You can't stand to be near me," House answered in an odd, brittle tone. "I'd have to get a hell of a lot closer than a hand on your face to stay the night."

Wilson blinked at him, confounded. He couldn't now recall much of what he'd said over the last few hours, but he didn't think any of it had ended up there. If it had, he hadn't meant it. He didn't think. Even if he had thought it. What? No wonder House looked so guarded. Wilson wasn't making sense to himself any more either. His thoughts seemed to be coming apart. He groped around for the important one and tried again.

"Please."

House's cane tapped on the stained rug. It sounded calculated, cold. But when Wilson chanced a look he was ditheringly uneasy, doubtless about the begging. Wilson was none too comfortable with that himself.

"Greg," he whispered, loathing the unsteadiness that had crept into his voice. "Don't make me do this."

It was House's turn to flinch a little, though Wilson didn't know what for. House let his breath out in a heavy, nasal sigh and his shoulders sagged with surrender. "You're going to regret this in the morning."

"Nuh-uh." He tipped his head from side to side in a dozy attempt at denial. "Not…'nless…th'Ambien was…GHB."

House snorted softly. "If you were conscious right now, I'd love to know how you think the two-cripple tango would work."

He began to make his way to the other side of the bed, but haltingly, as though he were waiting for a chance or a reason to leave. Why wouldn't he? Even if House didn't think he'd cheated – and he had no reason not to – he'd all but called Wilson a coward in the car. He _was. _He hadn't really acted to get himself out of the assault and now he couldn't seem to _re_act, reeling about as though he'd somehow stumble into the right state in which to deal with it, if there were such a thing. He couldn't think and he was emoting all over the place, neither of which House could stand, and he'd begged him pathetically to stay. He might as well have sat down and snivelled in the exam room. It would have been just as off-putting to both of them.

"Don't." Abruptly recoiling from the reluctance he thought he saw, Wilson waved him away with a jerky, unhappy gesture. "Go. It's okay. You shouldn't have to look after me like this."

House drew a hissing breath, the kind that made his nostrils flare, and he clicked his tongue the way he did when he thought someone was being moronic.

"Is that what you think every time I wake you up in the middle of the night, piss-ass drunk and ready to gnaw my leg off?"

"_No._" Emphatic, that, which was good. He thought. He found he wasn't sure what the question had been. "Go, House. M'fine. I just…I screwed up and…" He licked his dry lips and got his tongue tangled in his teeth. It took him a moment to sort himself out. "I can handle this. You don't have to…. I can manage on m'own."

_I just…don't want to. C'mon, Greg. Please. I'd seriously get on my knees if I could right now._ So, why exactly was he using reverse psychology? That was going to backfire….

"Yea-uh." House's disbelief came through loud and clear. "Wilson, shut up or _I'm_ going to hit you. I'm not one of your damn wives. I'm not _you. _I'm not going to bolt for the door at the sound of hoof beats, _in case_ it's the four horsemen; it could just as easily be a pony, a cow or a zebra."

"M'not a _case._ S'no Hippocratic oaths for relationships. We're not married."

_Why_ was he still arguing? He didn't even want to win. It just hurt marginally less to _let_ House go, than to have him go anyway. The knuckles of a closed fist pressed lightly against his sore lip.

"I don't run," House reminded him. "I _can't._"

There was something raw in his voice that let Wilson dip nearer to unconsciousness. He felt the bed tilt as House lumbered onto it.

"Th'nks, Gr'g."

"Shut up and go to sleep."

*

"No, _no_. Please. _Stoppit, _House_._ Ugh!"

Wilson coughed as a straw was pushed between his lips. He hadn't even heard the alarm clock.

"Drink."

He swallowed, rather than choke. Cranberry juice. Drifting on the edge of sleep, he drank slowly, puzzling at the gritty texture. Remembered something.

"Did you slip me something earlier?"

"When?"

"This morning."

"Shut up and go to sleep."

*

The alarm buzzed for the fourth time, rattling its way across the cabinet. A long, shirt-clad arm reached over to shut it off. The bed dipped as House reached for the jug, sloshed out a glassful. Wilson opened his mouth automatically. Water. He coughed, thought about throwing up. Subsided.

"House…"

"Shut up and go to sleep."

*

The alarm screeched for the tenth time. Wilson poured the water onto the floor.

"_Wilson._"

"Shut up and _let me_ sleep."


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three**:

It was nearing six a.m. when House snuck out of bed, leaving a shallow, empty depression cooling in the pre-dawn blue dark. Scooping his cane from the floor, where he'd left it so that it wouldn't clack against the headboard it was normally hooked over, he tiptoed lurchingly around to the other side of the room to pre-empt the penultimate summons of the alarm clock. The soft click of the button as he shut it off made him grimace, sounding as loud to him as the ear-splitting shrieks it forestalled. But there was no movement from the heap of Wilson-shaped pieces buried conclusively under the covers.

Eyes straining and the back of the clock tilted towards the vaguest hints of orange where the streetlights patched the curtains, he reset the alarm for nine a.m. Wilson had woken readily enough over the course of the night and he'd thrown up again only when he'd been too sleepy to recall that water needed to be swallowed, not inhaled. It would do no harm now if he were out for two or three hours rather than one. House put the clock back on the nightstand beside the half-finished mug of chocolate and Cut-Throat Bitch's picture, which by some unfortunate miracle hadn't broken when Wilson pitched everything across the room. He considered laying her flat on her smugly smiling face but, dead or alive, she held some thrall over Wilson, and Sinatra had a point: sometimes a man had to have whatever it took to get him through, be it tranquilisers, Jack Daniels or a dead chick's mugshot on the nightstand.

Pausing only long enough to further muffle the rubber tip of his cane with one sock and secure it in place with the other, House crept over to the door. He left it slightly ajar and set off down the hall, sacrificing dignity for the sake of stealth by using the wall as well as his cane to brace himself. The effort quieted his usual _clomp_-step to a desynchronised tapping. Picking his way through the smoky shadows gathered in the corridor and lounge, he collected, from where he'd casually discarded them last night, his black and red leather bike jacket and battered backpack.

He carried them over to the coffee table and perched on the couch. Inside the rectangle of sallow light coming in through the window from the street, he opened up the bag. The thing was jammed full to bursting, thanks to that Be Prepared Boy Scout Wilson. The idiot had skipped half his lunch break yesterday, and a great opportunity to gossip about the new tranny anaesthesiologist, to run an errand to the hospital shop. He'd cornered House in the elevators on the way back up to their adjoining offices and presented him with three new pairs of socks, a pack of boxers and one of those fussy little travel kits containing a toothbrush and paste, comb, flannel and a bottle of shampoo-cum-shower gel.

House dug that out first and eyed it with much the same distaste as he had the first time. Whichever Taub-sized moron had invented them ought to be shot. He'd tried to tell Wilson that he wasn't vacationing with the seven dwarves, that the New York trip was only three days for fuck's sake, and that despite it being the cleaning lady's week off, he hadn't _entirely_ run out of washed underwear: Wilson had two whole drawers full that he could purloin. But all that had got him was a dimple-flashing grin, the inevitable quip about Caustic being second cousin to Grumpy and the _hi-ho, hi-ho_ theme song floating off-key over Wilson's shoulder as they parted ways outside the glass doors of the DDX room.

The travel pack impacted with the coffee table with more force than he'd intended, as it occurred to him that had been the last time he'd seen Wilson until Chase had paged him with the 911. He was binning the stupid kit the first chance he got; there was a mawkishness about having it now that it had become associated with the early symptoms of nostalgia. He scowled at ferociously at the unused – _unusable_ – Tinkertoy items in their translucent box. He didn't see why Wilson should care if House's regular toothbrush emerged from the bottom of his bag covered in accumulated fuzz and dirt. It wasn't like _he_ had to use it and the exchange of germ-infested fluids that went on during kissing didn't magnify exponentially based on whether or not a toothbrush lived in a plastic case.

Not, he realised, with a sickening lurch of his gut, that it mattered any more. Wilson would probably kick him out in the morning. House having desperately scattered as many of his guitars, clothes, sneakers, books and general junk all over the apartment in an attempt to claim as much of a foothold in Wilson's life as Wilson had in his didn't do a damn thing to prevent him pulling up the welcome mat. Wilson kept stacks of moving boxes flat-packed in the second bedroom, as though he'd decided that, with three divorces behind him and a dead girlfriend, any future relationship he had was doomed to end in disaster. He was probably right.

Whatever hearts and Hershies crap Wilson had deluded himself into thinking he had with CB, it was a lot closer to happy than he could possibly get with House. Their relationship was a cut-and-shut: two half-wrecked, run-hard, old bangers soldered together because they were past fixing up separately. They weren't _meant to be_ or any other Hollywood bullshit. They didn't _belong together_. But, with the worst bits sawn off and a lot of willpower, somehow, they'd become roadworthy. Most of the time they cruised along okay, with a few blowouts, the odd breakdown, and a stall or two thrown in so they never got too comfortable with going absolutely nowhere. They weren't built for this, though. House had no idea if tonight's fiasco meant that they'd just wrecked completely or if they were going to be able to rattle on somehow with a huge spanner jammed in the works. Even if Wilson didn't remember what he'd said in the parking lot – or if he was going to forget about it for as long as he needed the ride to and from New York – he wasn't going to be in the mood for any of kind of backseat sexcapades for some time.

Which brought House back to the task in hand. Dumping all of Wilson's dubious gifts onto the floor, along with the screwed up tangle of a suit jacket he'd been dragging to and from the office because he was too lazy to unpack it, he turned his attention to the items already piled up on the coffee table. A thoroughly suspicious Chase had been solicited into bringing them over earlier in the evening. It hadn't been the medications House had requested that had perplexed his former fellow. It had been the laptop and the miscellaneous patient files. Files, moreover, that he was legitimately entitled to have, rather than the ones Chase had no doubt expected: Wilson's personal file or his recent cases, filched from the Oncology wing. House made a mental note to call Chase, Foreman and Cameron in on a weekend or two soon to run differentials on a few of the unsolved cases that he spent his time off tinkering with. By Monday, they'd be obliged to come if they wanted their paycheques.

The patient files were, admittedly, a ruse. He'd wanted his laptop so that he could hack the hospital's mainframe for the existing records on Wilson's last cases and especially the two jerks who had attacked him in the showers. However, since House didn't want Chase to guess and alert Cuddy, he'd asked for a few of the old files out of his bottom drawer too. He'd claimed that waking someone every hour was boring enough to put anyone to sleep and he'd rather work than watch TV. Less chance of getting distracted for long enough for Wilson to slip into a coma.

To give him credit, Chase hadn't bought a word of it. If he'd figured out what House was really up to, though, he hadn't said or done anything to make Cuddy change the mainframe password. It wasn't entirely surprising. Of his three former fellows, the Aussie was the one most like him, a motivation he hadn't admitted even to Wilson that had lay behind his summary firing of the man eighteen months ago. No one deserved to end up like him. He was two parts stunned and four parts disappointed that, after working for him for nearly four years – and leaving voluntarily – Foreman and Cameron were still gullible enough to believe that he really spent every Saturday and Sunday drunk or high or both, watching television until he ran out of soaps and downloading porn to watch after. Clearly they hadn't learned as much as he'd expected. Sure, they'd picked up enough medicine to make them marginally less moronic than most of the other doctors in the hospital, but they'd missed out on at least five valuable House lessons.

Number one was that the television networks didn't have enough good shows to entertain the brain dead, let alone someone like him for forty-eight hours solid, even with TiVo, six zillion channels and the adult Pay-Per-View. Numéro deux was that with no annoying patients or a rabid administrator with battering rams strapped inside her bra to contend with, there was a very simple equation: less pain equals less pills.

Nummer drei was that paying for sex and company was great for the shock value if it was all that could be had. But free, willing and not unwelcome company had turned out – mostly – to contribute to the above equation too. Actually, his fellows had probably figured that one out before he did. Número quarto was that smokin' hot sex literally beat porn hands down. He'd utterly renounce wide-screen and surround-sound for the live version any day. Pái míng dì wǔ – the most crucial lesson of all – was that everybody lies. _Especially_ sneaky drug-addicted diagnosticians.

Whilst he was thinking, House emptied the irrelevant case files out onto the coffee table and booted up his laptop. He checked that his top-of-the-range web cam was set up to take snapshots, switched the sound over to mute, closed the machine into standby and tucked it into the emptied bag. He transferred a series of unused plastic bags, slides and vials from the SOEC kit he'd run part of at the hospital from his jacket pocket into the outer pocket of the backpack. He dug his glasses out of the tangle of stuff he'd discarded onto the floor and put them on his head. Lastly, he got out a small bottle of injectable lorazepam and drew up a one mg dose into the syringe that had been secured to the side of the glass with an elastic band.

Discarding his cane, he shouldered the bag and picked up the syringe with his left hand. Using the wall to balance himself, he limped back to the bedroom. He shut the door as quietly as possible, lips twisted into a grimace in case the change in the light levels made Wilson stir. It didn't. House lurked by the door for a few moments, waiting for the natural hush to settle: the annoyingly irregular drip of the sink faucet in the en-suite, the occasional patter of cat feet along the window ledge and the intermittent _swoosh_ of cars passing on the road. When he could hear nothing but that, the tuneless humming of a drunk wandering down the sidewalk, his own stifled breaths and the slightly too rapid huff of air in and out of Wilson's lungs, he stole back to the bed and climbed onto it.

He settled himself with his good leg bent beneath him and the other stretched out. His body was alongside Wilson's hip and his toes touched the dented pillows where he'd been lying, wide-awake, since nine-eighteen that evening. He put the syringe between his teeth. One by one, he unpacked the things he'd brought in from the lounge and spread them over what was left of the crinkled cover that Wilson was hogging. He opened the laptop. It reanimated with a burst of light and he stifled it hastily under a pillow. Wilson took a deeper breath and grunted in pain, but he didn't wake. Dimming the screen, House woke up the photography programme and checked the cord on the web cam was long enough to manoeuvre. He made absolutely certain that it was sending only to his hard drive and not to any part of the world-wide-web, then set it down with the warm edge of the casing touching his outstretched calf. It left the screen visible to him but, tucked safely behind his bad leg, it was out of range if Wilson rolled over and made him yelp. Finally, he took the syringe out of his mouth.

For a moment he did nothing. He simply stared down at the only real friend he'd ever had. Isolation and insomnia had been his only constant companions for decades. Shuttling to and from military bases throughout his childhood and adolescence, rarely spending more than a year in the same time zone, sometimes as little as a few weeks or months, had wreaked havoc with any sense he might have had of stability or sanctuary. Constantly acclimatising to new people and places, routines and customs, had stressed him into a near-permanent state of acute alertness, his brain hurtling in overdrive as he battled to process, to adjust, to familiarise himself and find his feet amidst the deluge of sights and sounds and smells. There'd been no expectation of finding a _home_ – yeah, like that wasn't a twist of nomenclature irony – and he'd never been the kind of man who found it easy to fit in or make friends.

Wilson, though… Okay, so now House had a post and an apartment that suited him he'd pig-rooted, seeing no need to ricochet around like that ever again. These days, he was pretty easy to stay in touch with, geographically speaking. But he was accustomed to the loneliness he'd grown up in; he neither hated nor cared for it; it simply was. He knew how to work within it, how to do what he was best at, without having to question who he was or have his feelings and behaviour warped by unnecessary transitions. Loneliness was homeostasis. He'd fought to keep it, whatever the cost.

Wilson hadn't given a damn about that. No matter how many times House slammed the door in his face or refused to pick up the phone, he'd kept calling and he kept coming over. And he rarely returned the same favour when House's own piqued curiosity got the better of him. That curiosity had become fascination, become obsession. It had become friendship. Become more. Become whatever the hell came after stalking had been left a few stops back along the line. Wilson headed up the very short list of people House gave a damn about. He was king of the hill, the big cheese, the grand poohbah, House's one and only go-to-guy. If the psycho-bitch universe meant to call in the debt he owed Wilson for giving a toss about him, she could damn well bring it on.

Scarcely aware of what he was doing, House reached out and brushed a fluffy cowlick of bright brown hair off Wilson's forehead, the better to take in the expressions playing unconsciously across his features. It had become habit to watch Wilson sleep, when his leg wasn't too bad but his capricious brain was keeping him up. He was held rapt by his friend's constant animation, even in sleep. He'd watch while bushy brows twitched or his nose wrinkled or he half-smiled whenever House reached out and touched him, somehow safe in the darkness from reproof and mocking commentary – even his own.

Tonight, though, Wilson's forehead was tight and wrinkled, a sweaty sheen of discomfort gleaming on his skin. His lips moved, throat clicking as he muttered, incoherent and disquieted. His respiration and heart rate were elevated: seventeen breaths per minute up from fourteen, and seventy-two up from sixty-three. Normally he would be sprawled on his front, one arm cocked over his head and under the pillow, his face smooshed into the cotton, snoring as he dragged in breaths of recycled air trapped in the cocoon of bedding. Instead, his body was bent around the pain inside it, curled up like a question mark. His eyes beneath their closed lids were only now settling into the rapid movement of real sleep that the alarm had necessarily interrupted every hour before. What House was about to do would compromise that, but it couldn't be helped. He wasted another few moments, wishing that it could.

Whatever Wilson figured was the way forward tomorrow morning, House was keeping a weather eye on the big picture. For once, it hadn't been either one of them who'd stomped on the gas or the brake or taken his hands off the wheel of their relationship. Someone else had ploughed right into them and sent them into an almighty tailspin, running right over House's heart as they flipped and crashed and fetched up somewhere off the edge of the map to the sound of things breaking and groaning, suspended in shock. Thumbing at a pain crinkle between Wilson's eyebrows, trying to make it stay flattened out, House swallowed the flat, copper taste of fear and grimaced as pain torqued up his leg, sending the muscles into spasm. He rode it out, teeth clenched, then shifted up onto his knees. He dug in the pocket of his jeans for his Vicodin and dry-swallowed two. Whether or not he and Wilson could crawl out of this wreck and put their battered car back on the road, he wasn't about to let his best friend go up in flames for the sake of a label stuck on the back windscreen. Both the discomfort and his queasy sense of compunction were getting in the way of what he needed to do.

Shoving his pill bottle into his hip pocket, House made a last attempt to stroke away the crease between Wilson's eyes.

"Don't wake up, Jim," he whispered, his voice barely audible below the hissing passage of a truck on the street outside.

In the fleeting glare its headlights raked through the gap in the curtains, he switched on the bedside lamp. Then he drew back the covers and unbuttoned the overcoat to get at the waistband of the borrowed scrubs.

Wilson stirred, his good hand releasing its grip on the edge of the pillow to smack vaguely at the cool air skimming his skin. Keeping the syringe out of his reach, House caught his hot, damp fingers and briefly squeezed them, before laying them back beside the pillow. Wilson muttered something, settled and slept on. Praying to the makers of Ambien that he'd given him enough that this wouldn't rouse him, House slowly coaxed the waistband of the scrubs down to bare Wilson's hip and part of his gluteus maximus. He fished a small packet out of the knapsack, bit it open and wrapped his forefinger in the antiseptic wipe it contained. Lightly, he traced it over Wilson's skin. The wet pressure made him flinch, sharply enough that House was sure his eyes were going to open. But the soporific was doing its job. Wilson stayed out, for now.

Knowing that the Ambien alone wouldn't be enough to keep him that way – or induce amnesia if he accidentally did wake – House tugged the cap off the syringe and pocketed it. His fingers shook and, for an instant, he wanted to hurl the thing across the room. The armed fury that he'd barely managed to keep in check since Chase had paged to the locker room came upon him from behind. It broke across him suddenly with the sharp, infuriating _crack_ of a soldier's night stick, meting out instant reparation for some unseen, but foreseeable, error: _fix this, fix this_. He clenched his fingers on the plastic cylinder and held on. He _was_. This was the only way. Or the only way he had come up with in the nine hours he'd been staring at CB's damn ugly ceiling light.

The analytic side of his brain was at war with itself, though, because he knew there _was_ another way. He wrestled with the urge to shake Wilson awake instead, shove amphetamines down his throat until he was conscious enough to listen, and rail at him about this whole sickening mess and possible remedies until he came to some kind of Wilson-inspired epiphany. The man had a knack for knowing things and remembering things and seeing things a different way to everyone else. He stayed calm when everyone else was hot headed and he was usually ten times better at the emotional stuff than House was. One thing in favour of his personas was that there was always one to fit the moment.

But Wilson could get himself lost in those too. And he made crappy decisions when anyone close to him was at stake. House didn't figure he'd be any better with his own life on the line. Besides, between the pills and the concussion, he'd hardly been able to think coherently. Which left House right back where he started, with his one lousy option and the no-gos of waiting to see what happened next and discovering he should've done what he was planning in the first place or waking Wilson. He swayed slightly at the sudden sense that the soft grey coverlet had been pulled out from under him. He _always_ went to Wilson when things descended into the suckiest gutters of Suck Alley in Suckville. Where the hell was he supposed to go when what was wrong was wrong with Wilson?

_Get control of yourself, Greg._ His father's voice struck like a box on the ear. House shook his head, resenting the very idea that _he_ could have anything to say, but some part of his brain disagreed with the rest of it and the echo went on. Trusting himself, rather than his old man, he waited, syringe poised, for the memory to play itself out. _You're too sensitive,_ John House went on in his brusque, carrying voice that always held the hard edge of a yell_. Caring doesn't save a damn soul._ _It's all about actions and you're always on your own. Good times, bad times, hard times, you're_ always _on your own._ _You think this is tough, son?_ Teeth chattering at the remembered retribution for weakness, House forced himself to listen to what had subliminally passed through the sobbing apologies of his early boyhood and gritty silences of later on._ It'll get harder. Get over it. Get on with it. Get through it. You. Will. Get. Control._

_Cruel to be kind, huh, dad?_ Setting his teeth, House dragged his courage out of that chilly place where the copper tub in the snow-covered yard was freezemarked into his memory and used it to quench the firestorm of rage. It had been a while since he'd had to step himself through the process again. Eighteen years under his father's hardship-makes-the-man regime had made it both a hated and respected second-nature. This, though, this _thing_ that had happened to Wilson – _his_ damn Wilson – had come close to shaking him apart from the core. He supposed it was what all that so-called training had been for: not the battlefield of the day-to-day, but these surprise attacks.

_Damn you for being right about me, you son of a bitch, _he silently cursed his father's ghost. Where did he get off stalking around on the lunatic fringes of House's conscious, like a bad Old Hamlet impersonator? _Well, you're _not_ right about everything._ _Yours_ wasn't_ the only way to make a boy into a man._ Proof of that was snoozing in front of him. Wilson had had a scrapbook childhood, complete with family fun days out and a pet pooch to play with, not rattling around on military bases figuring out that it was okay to play with fire if you could suck up the burns and the smack upside the head for it afterwards. Wilson had made it through this process once without some dead drill sergeant standing over his shoulder telling him to take it like a man. He had his own brand of courage. He didn't have to verify to House that the once hadn't been a fluke.

"Damn you," he whispered, no longer sure if he was talking to his father or to Wilson, or which one had done a better job at screwing with his head. "_Damn you."_

He jabbed the needle into Wilson's hip and slowly shot the plunger home. Wilson shuddered, sinking deeper into sleep, and House ran his hand over the abused skin in silent apology.

"Sleep," he said, hearing the grim, tired edge in his own voice. "You don't need to be awake for this."

Fishing the cap out of his pocket, he put it back on the needle and tucked the syringe safely away in his bag. He put on his glasses and drew the pieces of the SOEC kit closer. Turning back to his now fully unconscious partner, it was with a cold, cultivated detachment that House carefully stripped him out of his clothes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Four:**

Wilson switched the setting on the showerhead to pulsing and lingered under the delightfully hot water. The long row of metal showers that stretched along the wall of the half-screen cubicles in the white-tiled wash chamber were more sophisticated than their utilitarian appearance let on. Every one had an unlimited supply of temperature adjustable water and a head that could be set to hard, soft or pulsing. Sometimes, he thought, it was the only way any of the staff survived the inevitable hazards of being covered in blood, puke, piss and shit or just having a ferociously bad day. He bowed his head forward, letting the thrum-swoosh-thrum-swoosh of the water work the kinks out of his aching shoulders and back.

He'd been up all night, and back and forth most of the day, holding Tania Walker's hand. She'd been transferred in a month ago, believing she was on death's doorstep. Her last few weeks had been spent discovering that, instead of that leading to a pearly gate, it was part of a series of endless doors in some viciously dark comedy sketch. One complication after another had brought her to Princeton Plainsboro and a whole string more had taken her to the threshold of the world, pushed – only to pull her back, over and over again. In the end, it hadn't even been the cervical cancer that killed her. An opportunist infection, borne by one of the body's own microbes, had attached itself to her central line and gone straight into her heart. He'd hit it with practically every antibiotic in the history of medicine, but her body, already as fragile as a dried-out rubber band, had finally snapped, leaving the ruined remains clutching his fingers at fourteen seventeen that Thursday afternoon and sling-shotting her soul into the wherever after. She would have been twenty-five on Saturday.

Squeezing his eyes shut as the water smeared his hair over his face, Wilson silently cursed – and not for the first time – the arrogant GPs (all three of them), the two idiot OB/GYNs who should have known better, and whichever incompetent lab technicians had botched the results of _five_ smear tests over the course of a year, before Tania had been rushed into Princeton Plainsboro. He considered cursing – and didn't – the old friend at Trenton who had sent him the file with the self-deprecating fax: _If anyone can get a plug in this drain it's you, Jim._ Firth was an egotistical son of a bitch and more than self-centred enough to bounce him a hopeless case to save his own statistics. _You should send_ yourself _on that assertiveness training course you've booked half the med students onto, _Wilson reproached himself_._ Having House permanently wiping his boots on his back was doing him no good at all. _If it looks like a doormat and it lies there like a doormat…_

_What price success?_ he wondered ruefully. Between Cuddy's ambition, his own, and House's madcap motivational coercions, he'd turned Princeton Plainsboro's mediocre oncology department into a fierce contender for the top spot on the East Coast. It had reached ninth nationally at the review last autumn. He'd just heard that he'd won two of the three most coveted federal grants for oncology this year and another two he'd been gunning for. He'd got the access he wanted to a new wonder drug that was still in the experimental phases and approval to participate in a very selective clinical trial. He should have been doing a dance of triumph.

But riding in on victory's tailcoats had come a whole host of hopeless cases. Each one's final phase had been agonisingly protracted, earning him a dozen sleepless nights hunched on a chair beside the stiff, stark sheets of an adjustable bed, his finger bones being ground to powder in the convulsive, skeletal grip of the dying, breathing in the fumes of ammonia and musk as the last painful breath rattled out and the bowels loosed their hold on whatever was left when life departed.

It had been a shitty two months, no pun intended. Half way through it his anti-depressants had packed up, leaving his exhausted psyche floundering in a chemically unbalanced mire of self-doubt, guilt and despair that did no one any good and one little girl a lot of harm. Sweeping a hand down his face, Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose and administered another anguished mental kick in his own ass. _How_ could _he have missed it?_ Never mind that the four other doctors of varying specialties who had seen Alicia Walker had missed it. Never mind that the damn lab results had missed it. Never mind that she was four years old and it was almost unheard of for a child to be in the twelve percent of paraneoplastic cases where there _wasn't_ a cancer to treat. There had been almost no chance that she'd survive.

But _he_ should have recognised it sooner. He'd built his career off being able to spot the signs that masqueraded as non-sequiters and he'd written a paper on the topic in med school. If he'd thought harder.... If he'd upped the dosage on his Prozac for one more week instead of being sensibly guideline compliant…. If he'd just swallowed his _stupid_ pride and asked House for a consult….

She'd still be dead. But at least her family would have known _why_ she was dying.

The door to the shower chamber opened into his silent tirade. Wilson didn't bother to look up. The only person likely to barge in without acknowledgement was House and, as much as he wasn't in the mood for a smart-mouthed comment right now, if no one else was likely to appear, he'd get a brief hug and a lewd proposition. Lately, it seemed to be the only thing that could make him smile.

"Dr. Wilson."

The voice was tattered, but familiar. It wasn't House. Flinging clinging cowlicks of hair out of his face, Wilson swiped at his eyes and peered through the steam at the intruder.

"Excuse me—" he started politely, half-turning his back for the sake of whatever propriety he could muster given that he was stark naked.

"No." The intruder cut him off in a low, fiercely controlled voice. The frosted glass half-door of the cubicle was pushed back and white t-shirt was peeled off and tossed aside, prelude to a bare footed approach. Shower spray pattered on black jeans and a matching tank top, disappearing instantly. "I want to talk to you."

"Okay." Wilson reached for his towel, folded over the half-screen and more than slightly damp. "If you could meet me outside in a few moments..."

"Uh-uh." A jerky little headshake. "Wrong kind of conversation."

"Ah."

Wilson swallowed nervously. There were at least three ways one could 'talk' to someone, though two of them didn't require words and usually only one involved nudity. This wasn't the first time this particular version had happened, although it definitely didn't get any less unsettling. He kept his eyes carefully on the pale, tear-streaked face and not on the smooth, sculpted stretches of bare skin and muscle. Nonetheless, his body reacted against the soft terry-cotton of the towel. He fumbled to secure the knot holding it around his waist.

The intruder let out a thin, satisfied sort of chuckle and moved close enough that there was no way to get out of the cubicle without coming into contact. He stepped to one side anyway, but the intruder darted in front of him and set one hand on either of the partitions, barricading the exit.

Wilson stopped, careful not to aggravate the situation.

"Please excuse me," he repeated firmly.

"No." Long fingers drummed provocatively on the partitions. Then, quick as a flash, the towel was plucked from his waist. It arced into the air and fetched up with a _whump_ against the far wall. A dark gaze raked him from head to foot and a slow smile spread across the intruder's face. "I don't think you're going to make me."

The water tapping against his back seemed to have grown very hot all of a sudden. Wilson swallowed and took a careful step in reverse, his hands held up in tactic surrender. A second later his back hit the shower mechanisms.

The jolt woke him. He lashed at his face, swiping away non-existent water. He struggled in the clutches of sodden, slippery…sheets? What the hell? Wilson put his hand out, cursed and snatched it back. He glanced instantly at the other side of the bed, wondered if it had been empty before – or after. The stench of sweat and urine was unbelievable. The windows were wide open.

He was still dreaming. He _had_ to be. He could hear water pounding steadily and steam floated across him to billow out of the window. Any second, he was going to wake up. He glanced in the direction of the running water and caught sight of the open door to the en-suite. _No such luck._ He ducked his head, a sullen throb and a blaze of heat across his cheeks making it through an odd, floating sensation. Puzzled, he flipped back House's overcoat, tucked around him with the covers, and glanced down at himself, trying to match the nightmare's reminder of his injuries to the disconnected sensation when he moved.

The sweat-soaked scrubs had melded to every line and limb of his body. The top clung to his torso, outlining the cast and sling strapping his arm to his chest beneath it. The right sleeve draped limblessly over the sheets. He worked his left hand under the clinging fabric and moved the heavy plaster slightly to feel cautiously around underneath it. His side didn't hurt anywhere near as much as it should. Strangely, though, there was one new sore spot down near his left hip, a tiny one, about the size of a needle stick….

"HOUSE!"

Wilson flung back the covers and scrambled to get up. The sheets stuck to him, pulling tackily against his wet scrubs and skin, clawing some of the soreness back to the surface. He swayed and sank back against the squelching mattress, giddy with pain and pills and mortification. House chose exactly that moment to lurch into the doorway of the bathroom. He snorted, apparently amused at Wilson's plight, as he sat panting on the bed edge, the room shifting like a Tilt-A-Whirl and his pulse bumping sluggishly in his carotid.

"You dosed me," he snapped, finding nothing funny about it at all. "What _with_? Tell me it wasn't your morphine!"

House ignored him and tramped over to rake the soggy covers into a heap at the foot of the bed with his cane.

"You peed in our _bed_," he pointed out, as if that were the much bigger issue.

"Right. That's never happened around you before. You damn well drugged me! In my _sleep._"

Spots danced before his eyes, his vision threatening to white out into tiles and running water again, as he realised that, although he'd woken fully dressed, House must've had to take some of his clothes off to do it. _The overcoat._ He'd been wearing it last night. This morning it had been draped over him.

"What did you do to me?" He meant to yell, but his voice tipped up toward the alto ranges and he softened it instinctively, right down to the seething whisper his department had learned to dread. "House, _what _the hell_ did you do?_"

House stammered at him, tripping over his own tongue, sounding ragged and a little hysterical himself. It didn't match his narrow-eyed, unflinching scrutiny at all.

"Wilson!" he barked and the stuttering stopped. "Easy."

House didn't move from the foot of the bed, but he let go of his cane, leaving it propped up against the box frame and raised his hands in a careful, pacifying gesture.

"Don't touch me!" Wilson recoiled, though House was nowhere near him and in no way inclined toward the pawing and patting most doctors, Wilson included, used to calm skittish patients. "Seriously. _Don't._"

"Dead as a lion," House promised in his own quiet, uncompromising tone. "Now stop gibbering like a demented monkey and take a breath. _Slowly._ Hold it for five seconds, then let it out. _Slowly._"

"I'm fine! I'm fine! For _fuck's sake_, just _tell_ me what you did! What did you—? _Why_ did you—?"

Wilson gasped to a stop. His chest was burning from lack of oxygen. Abruptly, he recognised the frenzied gabbling he'd attributed to House. Yeah. Well. It just figured that would be him. Great. He was making an idiot of himself. Insult to injury. _Literally._ He dragged in a draught of ammonia-scented air, held it and let it out, then another, and another. The fog gathering in his peripheries faded away and the next breath didn't shake so much.

"Okay," he growled, fisting the sheets in one hand for something solid to hold onto and shoving the replay stubbornly to the back of his mind. "Not fine. Answer the question."

"Nothing you needed to be awake for." House scooped up his cane again and went back to prodding at the bed sheets. "In case you've forgotten, Dr. I Got My M.D in Cereal Box, patients don't have to be conscious for everything."

Every one of Wilson's injuries began to throb at that. Hands drove into his flesh again. Knuckles cracked on bone. Feet slammed into his side with dull, sickening crunches. His arm was twisted behind him. His shoulder popped and flopped loosely in giddying rush of agony. He crashed onto his knees. Fingers tore at his hair, wrenched his head back. His mouth was prised open. He gagged. Recoiled. Swallowing, spluttering, he dragged himself out of the replay.

"Have you, oh, I don't know, ever heard of _consent?_"

House eyed him steadily, not backing down in the slightest. "You gave that when you agreed to Cuddy's terms of discharge. You might be off the clock for your little getaway extravaganza, but you've stuck me with a forty-eight hour shift. You know my credentials. In fact, I think you still _have_ my credentials, since you wouldn't let me light the fire with them when I first moved into my apartment. If you can find them, you can check them again. Or do you want me to do up a chart on a post-it note? Wear a stethoscope? Some other symbolic verification that you're protected by the Hippocratic oath? If you'd wanted that, you should've let Foreman admit you."

"Hmm, stay in so that hospital guards can drink coke and watch the football instead of the security cameras some more or come home where I _should be_ safe and entrust myself to your ethics-indifferent brand of medical violation. Assuming that what you did to me _was_ real doctor stuff," he added, eyes narrowing as another thought occurred to him. "As opposed to some cracked attempt to cheer me up."

Incontinence was, admittedly, the side effect of some sedatives. But not usually the Ambien he'd been on last night. Experience made Wilson glance around for the tub of water he'd had his hand put in while he slept. There wasn't one. Even the waste bin had gone. Apparently pranking whilst someone was injured _was_ below the belt. House noticed the suspicious searching and an odd, closed look came over his face. Discarding the covers abruptly, he stalked back toward the bathroom.

"Not being in pain is fun," he said, over his shoulder. "Don't knock it."

Wincing at the series of unnecessary thumps from the bathroom that followed, Wilson kept his soggy seat on the bed edge and tried to work out what was happening. House was the one who could go from nought to annoying in point one of a second. But he wasn't. He was behaving in that too casual – too _civil_ – to mean it way he pulled off when he was secretly hurt. Wilson had been awake for less than five minutes. Without mentioning House's pain management strategies, pissing him off that quickly had to be a record.

Only he had, hadn't he? Even if he wasn't criticising House's self-medicating, he'd taken a hell of a jibe at his ability to do his job. An _unjustified_ jibe. House was an arrogant, invasive, rule-flouting ass. But he was every bit as brilliant as he thought he was and better. There was no one Wilson trusted more to get him through a medical crisis. House had been listed as his medical proxy for years, along with an addendum qualifier that he could refuse to act as proxy if he needed to in order to take on Wilson's case personally. Not that any of that meant he had no right to be pissed about getting drugged in his sleep. Especially when he suspected it wasn't the first time House had secretly dosed him in the last two days, _not_ counting the Ambien in his hot chocolate.

The brief burst of energy wearing off, Wilson ran a hand carefully over his bruised face and decided he was too tired to be morally outraged. Whatever House had done was working. He hurt at least fifty percent less than he'd expected to. All the same, he wasn't so credulous that he'd automatically chalk it up to genuine doctor stuff. Heaving himself to his feet, he plodded over to the bathroom to see if he could prise the cause out of the culprit.

House was perched on the edge of the bath, testing the water temperature with one elbow. Wilson could smell sea minerals. His favourite oil glistened on the surface of the water. He cringed silently that House had found that, and more, since to do so he must've been going through the under-sink cupboard with the cleaning products in it. Passing up another golden opportunity to mock, House said crisply,

"Get cleaned up."

Yeeaaah. He'd get right on that. Staring at the fresh yellow towels on the toilet seat, Wilson told himself firmly that he did not need to go around checking all the door locks in the apartment were secured first. That was simply ridiculous. House eyed him, head cocked consideringly. Then, as though concluding he were the problem, he levered himself up and came out into the bedroom. As he passed Wilson in the doorway, it occurred to him that House was putting most of his weight on his cane. His skin was pale, his eyes bugged and watery. The age lines on his face looked deeper than usual.

"Get on with it." House glared at the dark stain on his overcoat, which was sprawled across the floor like a cotton-blend corpse outline. "You stink."

Wilson grimaced, his own concern for his friend deflated by a spike of shame.

"Do you have a non-jerk setting _anywhere_ in your head? Something approaching – oh, I don't know – normal?"

"Is bedwetting normal in forty-one year olds?"

Wilson crossed his arms as best he could and refused to be embarrassed any further.

"Why else would companies make adult diapers?"

House clamped his lips together over a reflexive grin, surprise and approval flitting through his eyes. Wilson felt his own mouth twitch in response. Stealthy midnight eightballs aside, coming home had been the right choice. If he'd let Foreman admit him, there would have been staff relays coming and going, tiptoeing about as if Cuddy had re-carpeted the halls in eggshells. It was a weight off his aching shoulders to know that House wasn't planning to creep around and make him protest that he was okay, until even _he_ thought he was protesting too much. Somewhat fortified, he reached out and snagged House's wrist.

"It's very rare for a drug with antimuscarinic properties," he remarked, head tilted slightly to study House's reaction. "But Cyclizine can sometimes cause incontinence. It also an opioid-enhancer."

Another kind of sedative was more likely. As far as Wilson knew, incontinence was only a _theoretical_ side effect of Cyclizine: all drugs could, on occasion, cause the reverse of any of their intended effects. But there was no reason to assume House hadn't doped him more than once. He'd never know if he didn't at least pretend to offer the benefit of the doubt.

House flexed his jaw and studied the tentative fingertip contact Wilson had on his arm, as if considering shoving it off. He'd never been good with apologies, giving or receiving. With an obvious effort, he nodded and some of the cool distance on his face dissipated into plain bone-weariness.

"You threw up again during the night," he admitted gruffly. "I paged Chase and had him drop a few things off. He brought an IV kit, Cyclizine shots for the nausea, more Vicodin, lorazepam, and Xanax, for if you have another panic attack. I gave you more Vicodin in the water you were drinking at six hourly intervals, two shots of Cyclizine – the last about two hours ago – and one milligram of lorazepam at six oh nine this morning. You'd woken up every hour before that with no problems, because the Ambien wasn't keeping you under. I figured you needed some real sleep."

Despite the curt delivery, the restive fidgeting with his cane tip against the neutral broadloom betrayed how worried he'd been. Even with the amped- up Vicodin in his system, muting his emotions as well as his pain, Wilson felt a swell of nausea. It had nothing to do with the concussion and everything to do with guilt. It pooled in his stomach, thick and heavy, dragging his shoulders down and making him grimace.

"You didn't sleep at all, did you?" he asked quietly, though there was no real question about it.

House did shrug that off. He limped over to strip the bed.

"Greg." As much as Wilson wanted out of his wet scrubs, he couldn't leave it like that. Palming the back of his neck awkwardly, he said, "I'm sorry. I'm being an ass, aren't I?"

"Seriously?" House flashed him a look that was half disgruntled, half pretended surprise. "You can't tell?"

"Honestly, no." Wilson made a vague, circling gesture in the region of his temple. "My head's all scrambled."

"Confusion and irritability are side-effects of minor traumatic brain injuries," House pointed out, peeling off a pillowcase and tossing it into the heap of damp linen on the floor. He sighed and apparently felt compelled to admit, "The Vicodin won't help with that either. You're not used to it."

Pillow wadded in one hand, he dropped his arm down by his side and half-turned to finish off with a pseudo-mild expression, "Fortunately, you're being as charming as a kitten with a ball of string."

The corner of his lip curving sheepishly, Wilson nodded his own acceptance of the mutual apology and started to retreat.

House, not as immersed in piling up bedding headed for the giant machines at the Laundromat as he'd been making out, arrested him in a cooler, calculating tone.

"On the other hand, all of those symptoms, as well as the nausea and temporary amnesia, can be caused by an acute post-traumatic stress response. I had attributed it to the concussion, but you're remarkably coherent for a man who claimed to be unconscious yesterday for long enough to rate a grade three."

"Am I?"

Wilson had never perfected a poker face, so he opted for puzzlement instead. Quickly, he closed the door between them.

*

Alone in Amber's royal blue and lemon bathroom, he worked his way out of the rank, sopping scrubs. The trousers came off easily enough. With the ties loosened they slid down his legs and puddled on the tiles. The top, however, was a bitch. His left arm was in the sleeve, but his right, trapped against his bare chest by the sling, was underneath the bulk of the cloth. He had to bite the scrub cuff to worm his left arm out of the sleeve, then get hold of the hem and ruck the rest of the top up over his head. It was awkward, it hurt and, although he could hear House clumping about outside the door, he couldn't bring himself to ask for help.

That would go one of three ways. House would refuse point blank and go and hide on the couch with the TV on in a way that was only marginally more grown up than covering his ears and lalalaing very loudly, because he did _not_ want to deal with Wilson being hurt. Alternatively, House would help, but he'd mock or grope or poke Wilson in one of his bruises, because the only way he _could_ deal with mountains, or molehills for that matter, was to make one into the other, and _Wilson_ wasn't ready to have this made into a joke at his expense. Or House would help and he wouldn't do anything else; he'd be quiet and professional and…and _distant_, like he'd been last night. Just thinking about that made it sound like the worst of the options. Whichever way it went, they'd end up snapping at each other again. Fighting with the scrubs himself actually hurt less.

He managed it eventually and scooted the damp heap of lilac cotton across to the base of the laundry hamper with the side of his foot. If the stains didn't wash out, he'd buy Foreman a new set. If they did, well, what he didn't know couldn't gross him out. Naked, Wilson glanced habitually into the gargantuan mirror on the wall opposite the bath and immediately wished he hadn't. House had chinked the narrow window above the foot of the bath to let the steam out, apparently guessing that a blinding opaque fog filling the room would have had Wilson back in the bedroom in a hot second. Unfortunately, it meant a crystal clear view of his own reflection and Amber's exhibitionist streak hadn't taken into account the possibility of having to confront that whilst mangled.

He'd been aware that he hardly looked his usual neat and tidy self around the point at which the SAART had got out their camera. It was a stupid thing to have got self-conscious about, given where the lens had been mainly pointed and the types of injuries they were trying to record. But then he vaguely recollected having asked Cameron for a blowdryer when Chase was putting stitches in the three-inch gash across his right pectoral too. The clunk on the head really had scrambled his brains. He could practically hear House asking whether he styled his pubes and telling him to quit medicine to coif hair in the Rainbow Salon. An involuntary smile at the dry echoes of well-honed mockery crumbled as he examined himself properly for the first time.

He stood awkwardly, his weight listing to the right, half-consciously resting his left knee, which had puffed up overnight and turned gothic shades of violet and crimson from a useless attempt to stop himself being shoved down onto his face. His thigh was peppered with bruises, the worst nearly a scrape where a kick had glanced off, missing his groin by an inch. A queasy, quivery sensation raised goosebumps over his arms and legs as he tentatively cupped his cock and balls. The skin flinched, shrinking in his palm. He hesitated, the muscles in his arm bunching at the contradictory urges to cover himself protectively, much too late, and to pull his hand away from the lumps of flesh that no longer seemed to belong to him. He closed his eyes for a second, squashed both impulses, and with a veneer of practicality pasted firmly over the top, palpated himself carefully, running through the motions that Montrose had performed during the genital/rectal exam.

His cock was soft and unreactive between his fingers, the shaft unbruised and easily palpable. The glans and urethral opening felt normal. He ignored the relief that came with that thought. Gently, he lifted his cock up so that he could examine his testicles. They'd retracted upwards toward the inguinal canal, retreating from a chill that had nothing to do with the room temperature. The skin, shrivelling under every touch, felt slightly too tight. Despite his urge to shiver, it was also a little hot. A vague, unfamiliar ache lingered when he took his hand away.

Frowning, Wilson limped over to the medicine cabinet over the basin and dug out the spare penlight he kept on the top shelf. He went back to the door, checked the lock, glanced around to make certain the room was empty – which it obviously _was_, idiot – and flipped off the lights. He snapped the pen on and, juggling it awkwardly against his sac, watched to see whether any area would transilluminate. It didn't. No hydrocele, then. Maybe the start of an infection? _Hell._ That would figure. He snapped off the pen, tossed it into the sink and put the lights back on. Probing cautiously, he moved his testes about, identifing the wiry vas deferens and, with some inevitable guesswork, the components of the spermatic cord. A wave of nausea roiled through him and he jerked his hand away, feeling sweat bead all along his hairline.

Okay. Enough. Fine. Apparently House had been right about what that stood for. Dragging the back of his hand across his damp forehead, Wilson inhaled slowly through his nose and released it through his mouth, counting to five every time. His breathing steadied and, after a moment, his pulse stopped skittering so hard he could feel it in his wrists and throat. Backing off any further exploration there, he carried on with his visual assessment.

If he half-turned, he could see the bruising on his back, solid, blue-black blocks that had landed squarely above and below his kidneys, missing his spine by millimetres. There was an angry red line, about two inches thick where he'd staggered into the edge of one of the cubicle partitions. It looked rather like House had cracked him one with his cane. The rest of his back looked normal, only a few scattered, minor, abrasions marring the natural, creamy, ever so lightly suntanned appearance of his skin. He prodded the faint scar just above his left hipbone where seven year old Danny had crashed into him on a sled when he was nine, taking momentary comfort in the memory of lying laughing in the snow, too hyped and bundled up in layers of coats to register that the sharp corner of the sled had actually bitten him.

If only this were so easy to dismiss. He made to shift his hand toward his coccyx and stalled as his heart rate hiked again. Annual physicals didn't make that procedure any more bearable and – no. _No._ He curled his fingers into a fist and lowered his hand to his side. Montrose had said he was fine. So.

Turning back to face the visible damage, Wilson went on, methodically. His left side, like his legs, had only a scattering of bruises. He'd skinned his left elbow; the grip tiles in the shower scraping a long track down his forearm and over his funny bone that looked like road rash. The bruising where he'd hit the nightstand was spectacular, but superficial, red and so puffy there were little dimples in the swelling where his knuckles were, rather than the normal bony protrusions. He wiggled his fingers, wincing, but reassured himself that nothing had broken.

His right side was a mess. A white big rectangular dressing had been taped over his hip and blood had soaked through it, leaving a rusty impression of the grip-tile graze beneath. There was a gash across his upper chest, stitched and dressed, where he'd crashed through one of the closed cubicle doors and the supposedly shatterproof glass had splintered and gouged out a ribbon of flesh. Another piece had been jabbed into his side, before the second assailant, charging into the room at that moment, had snatched it off the first and considerately flung it away.

His ribs were one giant splash of bruising, as though someone had hurled a bunch of red, blue, black and purple paint cans straight at a canvas and let them explode. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd been kicked there, though he hadn't exactly been trying to remember. The flimsy sling and stupid pink cast spoke for themselves. The muscles and tissue around his shoulder capsule felt squishy and hot, as though the joint had been filled with that self-warming variant of astroglide. The slightest movement literally stripped the illusion, the overstretched ligaments and tendons twanging as though he were dragging them over a cheese grater. The thought of taking the sling off in two days and having to try using his arm again made him feel ill.

The worst of it, apart from that nebulous, nerve-wracking sense that something unseen was wrong with his junk, was looking himself in the face. There was a dramatic bruise across the right side of his jaw – he was lucky that hadn't dislocated too – and a smudgy one across his cheekbone that House would doubtless end up comparing to woman's kohl. But it wasn't any of that. It was the shock that seemed to have burrowed into every pore and line of him. His skin was blotchy and pale, his cheeks were hollow, and the lines around his mouth had become deep grooves in the dark, scratchy beginnings of stubble. There was a crinkle between his eyes that wouldn't smooth out, hoisting the ends of his eyebrows up into a kind of baffled salute. He looked at once old and impossibly young: baffled, battered, bewildered.

And he looked like every family member and cancer patient to whom he'd ever delivered bad news. Like Tania. Like poor little Alicia. He had that same shocky glaze over the surface of his eyes and the raw, core-deep devastation beneath that he wasn't yet able to feel. He looked away, shying from the look, from the number of times he'd seen it at work, or staring back at him in the mirror after one of the innumerable fuck-ups he'd made of his personal life. Well, he'd gone and done both this time. Hats off to Dr. Wilson. First prize a _kick me_ sign.

Or one that read: _point and laugh_. Wilson raised his hand with a kind of appalled disbelief and ran his fingers through his hair. He'd got all the shampoo out yesterday before he was interrupted and, despite the panic and the pain sweats, which had turned the roots to greasy stalks, the upper layers stood up in fluffy, tousled disarray. House ought to be grinning his fool head off. He got a real kick out of getting Wilson thoroughly tousled whenever he could. No matter how much tussling on the couch, floor and mattress preceded a good roll between the sheets, he'd never done as first-rate a job as this.

For some absurd reason Wilson's eyes prickled with tears as he thought about their antics. His skin teemed and thrilled with a compulsive need to go and plaster himself all over House. To crush their lips together and jockey for dominance, their fingers skating on sweat, laughing, biting, pushing, shoving, jostling, thrusting and taunting, until they slammed breathlessly together, interlocked, prising deep groans and throaty shouts out of one another. Finally, finally, they would sprawl, panting, cheek sweat-glued to chest, House's heart belting under Wilson's ear, and long, guitar-calloused fingers toying idly through the soft brown hairs at the sensitive nape of his neck.

He _wanted_ that. _Needed_ that. Needed it so badly that his stomach cramped, as though one of his assailants' hands had got inside his skin somehow and ripped out his core. Because right along with it came sickening dread, a skin-crawling terror at the thought of being touched, because it would hurt, hurt more, hurt worse, hurt in ways he didn't know how to brace himself for. He squirmed in his skin and a quake spilled through him, as another far more familiar fear reared its dark head. That turbulent tumbling with House had been pretty much all that had got him through the last few weeks. He couldn't even start his next round of antidepressants until the last batch had cleared his system. Blast. Shoot. Damn. _Hell._ He could not, _would not_, fall apart. Not here. Not now. _Not_ because of this.

"_Don't_." He spoke out loud in his softest, most serious whisper, stared square into his own welling eyes and outright defied himself to break down. "Don't. You. _Dare._"

He blinked hard and managed to gulp down the lump in his throat. It settled, heavy and sodden, in his belly. Almost unconsciously, he cinched his left arm carefully around his waist, not so much holding onto his ribs as simply holding. He closed his eyes and willed the strip of warmth where his forearm pressed against his abdomen to spread through the rest of his body. For a fleeting moment, he let himself imagine that it was not his arm, that a chin would come to rest on his shoulder, that it would be House—who would never in a million years touch him casually like that. And, since neither of their fantasies included plaster casts, morphine and a quadruple dose of Xanax to boot, he let his arm drop and reopened his eyes.

He shot the oversized mirror a poisonous glance, projecting everything he didn't want to feel over onto his reflection. Abruptly, and somewhat belatedly, he registered why House always hung towels over the top edge of the mirror, smearing the glass all to hell, instead of using the perfectly good towel rail over the radiator. It _sucked_ having to look at the barely holding together wreck of a self he hardly recognised. Monumentally sucked, in fact. A fresh rain of guilt dripping down to join the reservoir collecting in his belly, he vowed to get the stupid mirror taken down or replaced when he felt better.

Checking the door was locked once more, Wilson turned to face the steaming water. Oil glistened on the top, releasing a clean, outdoorsy smell that reminded him of cracking small rocks in search of ore and minerals – treasure hunting with his family. Beside the oil bottle that he hadn't put away, House had left two things deliberately. One was his cell phone. His mother. Wilson hadn't called her in a while. He reached for the phone, then clenched his fist. No. Eight a.m. on a Friday – she'd know something was wrong. He picked up the saran wrap instead. Thumbing the neatly folded end up, somewhat clumsily, he wound long strips of it around his cast to keep it dry.

Getting into the tub proved more taxing than the car seat, but once he was settled in the water, the heat of it dragged a contented groan out of him. He wasn't a huge fan of baths; stewing in the day's sweat and dirt struck him as fairly disgusting. But House obviously _was_. The water was deep enough to immerse him up to the chest, swathing him in warmth. For the first time in hours he wasn't freezing cold. Once the initial sting of it against his abrasions dulled, it was glorious.

The water lapped against his back, kneading gently at muscles that had set overnight into painful spasm. His spine felt like a boy scout had been using it as a string to practice knotting techniques. Little by little, the ugly tangle started to release, taking with it some of the tightness in his chest and side. A kind of stasis settled over him, warm and silent and still. He tilted his head back against the edge and stared past the dormant brass showerhead. He wasn't calm, exactly, but empty would do.

The cooling of the water stirred him from his trance. Reluctant to move, to bring the pain back, to do anything that wasn't float here and not think, Wilson shifted his stare, but that was all. His bad arm carefully propped on his chest, he peered through slatted eyes at the moisture beading along the rudimentary waterproofing on his cast. A glitter of rainbow droplets danced along the translucent saran wrap. The cast wrap itself was really was quite violently pink. He'd have to get that changed on…Monday. He shut his eyes and sank lower into the water. Seventy-one hours.

If there was a knock, he didn't hear it. The lock clicked and the door opened. He shot upright, swearing as pain shredded through his narcotic cloud.

"Idiot."

As insults went, it was too affectionate to add much to his injuries. House put the knife he'd used to pick the catch down on the linen hamper. Wilson stared at it, heart thudding, thinking of _Psycho._

"Wilson. _Jimmy._ It's me. Don't have a coronary."

A sharp clunk startled his attention away from the knife. House had flicked his cane against the side of the bathtub. Wilson followed the long shaft up to House's body, noticing every inch of him in hyper-focus: yesterday's faded blue jeans held up by a battered leather belt with the ridiculous tape cassette buckle that Kutner had given to him when he failed to keep his birthday a secret, his favourite orange graphics t-shirt and a brown shirt, crumpled from lying on the closet floor and being slept in. He hadn't even taken off his sneakers. Around him, though, the room was going gauzy and pale, the colour leeching out of the walls, whitening them as they closed in.

"Wilson!" House hit the bath side again with a resonant bang. "Don't get lost."

He struggled to pull himself out of the replay. The walls widened and turned lemon, but his heart kept galloping, surging around in his ribcage like a colt in a corral. He was all but trapped in the tub. It had taken so long, so much delicate manoeuvring to get in here. He hadn't even thought about how to get out. He couldn't. Not in a rush. And House was blocking the door.

_Stop it. Stop it. It's House. It's okay._ _It's okay._ _It's…not._ Self-consciousness smashed over him and he started to shake, going hot and cold simultaneously. It didn't matter that it was House or that he'd never indulge in anything as offensive as pity. It didn't matter that he'd seen him naked a million times. He didn't want to be seen like this, like his reflection, damaged and vulnerable and _bare_. He _wasn't_ this. He wasn't weak and he didn't need help. Not from House. This wasn't how things worked between them. Conveniently forgetting all the other times it had been House propping him up, not the other way around, he flung his good arm up, half-covering his eyes as he gestured violently toward the door.

"Get out, Greg. Out."

"Hang on."

"No, damnit! _Now_."

"One _minute_," House growled. "Cripple speed, you jackass!"

Wilson hardly registered the soft thumps of things being set down. He was locked into a spiral of panic. If House saw him like this, he'd never be able to lean on him when he was in pain. He'd shut himself off and figure Wilson had his own problems or couldn't handle himself, let alone House's crap too, and then he'd end up overdosing on Vicodin or half-killing himself with morphine and shooting his liver up either way – he'd never get a transplant with his history – he'd die slowly, jaundiced, wasting away, in agony from his abdomen and leg, all because Wilson couldn't look out for him any more. He'd fail him. House would die because of it, just like Amber had. Just like his patients did. Just like Tania and Alicia had.

He had a sudden vision of the diagnostics office, its black slat blinds closed and dust gathering along the glass surfaces for a week, before Foreman parked himself behind the desk and had the nerve to toss up House's lacrosse ball.

"Get the _fuck_ out!"

Who that yell was aimed at was anyone's guess. A yellow rubber duck he didn't know he owned rebounded off not Foreman's forehead but the closed bathroom door. The familiar lemon walls with the little blue diamond-shaped border tiles, glass shower screen and off-white tub processed slowly. Coming to the conclusion that he was not in the hospital corridor between diagnostics and oncology – and he was not entirely sure why he thought he had been – Wilson stared down at his open hand. Very, very slowly, he balled his fingers.

"Hah," he whispered, holding his breath until the grinding ache in his side and the white-hot pokers being jammed into his shoulder had abated. "Note to self: save the dramatic gestures for later."

"Wilson." House knocked lightly on the outside of the door. "When you're finished committing acts that will get you reported to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rubber Animals – _wow_, that sounded way kinkier than I was going for – you need to take your post-exposure prophylaxis. I bet you weren't listening yesterday, so waggle your ears now.

"You're on Combivir – that's 300mg of Retrovir and 150 mg of Epivir – the white oblong ones with GXFC3 printed on one side and Viracept, the white oval ones with V on one side and 625 on the other, for the next twenty-eight days. Take one of each now and one of each again this evening. There's Immodium in the bag too, since I figure you don't want the poopy side effects. And drink some water. One of the other side effects is more nausea. I don't want to have to _use_ the IV."

"Okay, okay," Wilson called, more to shut House up than because he'd heard anything he'd said. He'd got water on his face when he threw the duck. Scraping it away with a shudder, he clambered painfully out of the bath. Mostly to himself, he muttered, "I went to med school too."

He couldn't be certain, but he thought House imitated him through the door.

Draping the largest of the yellow towels around himself as best he could, he discovered that House had come in only to bring him clothes and the pills, both of which he'd not thought to pick up from the bedroom. There was a pair of blue jeans, faded soft, sky-pale and threadbare, and his old grey McGill sweater folded up on the closed toilet lid. Underneath was a red t-shirt, a pair of boxers and unmatched socks. House wasn't Suzy Homemaker, but he was all too familiar with the need to cover up. In the grand total of two years they'd been together – the eighteen months between Wilson's third divorce and the Tritter debacle and the six or so since Amber – he'd only ever seen House naked during sex. Even then he'd keep his clothes on or the covers around him if he possibly could. He made another mental note, besides getting rid of the mirror, to rethink hassling him about that.

He started to dress quickly, finished slowly, breathless. His ribs grated as he sat on the toilet seat, contorting his legs in directions they didn't comfortably bend to avoid folding over from the waist to pull his socks on. His shoulder felt as though someone was swilling acid through it. Breathing shallowly to avoid joggling either, he went over to the sink and unbagged the vials of anti-retrovirals that Montrose had prescribed. He opened the mirrored doors of the cabinet over the sink and set the medications out on the bottom shelf. He had to push back a whole host of others to do so: paracetamol, ibuprofen, codeine; a spare bottle of House's Vicodin; a few bits and pieces for managing his breakthrough pain, including the lock-box with a single shot of morphine in it; the remains of the useless Prozac he, Wilson, had stopped using a week ago; a few left over packets of Amytriptalin and half a dozen other antidepressants that hadn't worked either; as well as various over the counter treatments for allergies, motion sickness, colds, coughs, and insomnia.

He filled his tooth mug with water and took a sip, wetting his mouth. Working out the doses from the labels on the vials, one by one, he got out the anti-virals and anti-diarrhoeals. Gathering them carefully in his right palm, he went over to the toilet, lifted the lid and dropped them into the water. He pulled the flush and watched for a few seconds as they dissolved and spun away. Then he went back to the sink and shut up the cupboard. He finished the glass of water and let himself out of the bathroom.

TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

**Part Five:**

The alarm clock was buzzing when Wilson emerged from the en-suite. Its bright turquoise digits flashed the hour, a blare of light and sound that swore at him for being at home this late on a workday. His stomach skittered with instinctive guilt, but the solid, sharp-cornered ache that had crammed itself into his skull and acid-hot trail burning up and down between his fingertips and his right ear put paid to a half-formed notion that he should make a trip to the hospital and get the bulk of his workload reassigned.

Cuddy had probably seen to it already. She'd said something about that yesterday, between the E.R. and the exam room and the CT and the police interview and a dozen other procedures of which he had only the sketchiest memories. It occurred to him, as he eyed the alarm zizzing about on the nightstand that, even if she hadn't, it didn't matter. He'd booked this time off in advance. All his cases were covered, his appointments had been shuffled, even his paperwork was either up-to-date or could wait until…Monday. _Seventy hours._ Annoyed at the reminder, he limped over to the clock and knocked the batteries out.

The quiet was not an improvement. It blew in through the open window, billowing the closed curtains apart, and stuffed itself into every corner, like polythene packing eights pouring through a chute. Stifled and unsettled, Wilson strained to hear past it for the commuter traffic that should have been chuntering down the road, for the thud-thud of his heartbeat or the nervous shush of his breathing, but there was only the high-pitched whine of tinnitus in his left ear that seemed to emphasise the hush. He started toward the door to the passageway, seeking the reassurance of House's company. Before he had gone two steps something tapped him on the back.

He whirled. A half-held breath burst out of him and he fell instantly onto his back foot. The draft from the window buffeted the front of his sweater tauntingly. _Idiot._ He'd been able to see every inch of the room from the en-suite doorway. There was nobody here and, unless they planned on mountaineering over the dumpsters on the garden path below the window, no way in either. _Get a grip, Jim. Just because someone's out to get you, doesn't mean you should be paranoid._

To prove the point to himself, he stepped away from the door and stood still, the fingers on his good hand splayed at his side while he breathed slowly in and out. He was a grown man, for goodness sake. He'd made a fool of himself twice already today, startling over nothing. If he kept it up he'd need to redecorate the room in rubber and swap his suits for a straitjacket. He glanced around, briefly, imagining it.

It would actually make very little difference to the décor. Without the twilight-tone covers or the smoky grey, brushed cotton comforter on the bed, the room was starker and blander than most hotel suites. There was almost nothing here that was his, or even Amber's, aside from that one picture on the nightstand. She'd rented the place ready furnished and they'd only got as far as redecorating one room in the few months they'd been together. After she died he'd left everything as it was, as unable to move anything as he had been to move on. Once he'd got back together with House there'd seemed very little point. House had his own apartment. Though they spent most nights here, it wasn't theirs in any sense of the word. It was simply closer to the hospital. Convenient.

Wilson's eyes drifted to the bed. It had been stripped bare and new blue and silver-grey patterned mattress was drying in the draft. He hoped it was going to survive the incident. It was one of the few things in the apartment that he'd bought himself and the only one that House had had any input in. He'd bought the frame with Amber, but the softer mattress he'd picked out with her had been wrecking his back. He'd not really considered changing it, until one night last month when House had woken in seven kinds of agony and been unable to get himself out of the deceptively comfy body dents it accommodated. Amidst the cursing and frantic pill-popping, Wilson had found himself promising they could get a new one.

It had been delivered two days ago and, when he'd curled up last night, he'd still been able to smell the newness of the fibres and the lingering trace of polythene packaging from being stored in the warehouse. Now it smelt strongly of deodoriser, with the oddest approximation of seaspray built in as an afterthought. It didn't so much freshen things up, as catch in the back of the throat and taste caustically of industrial chemicals. He'd always figured that, since they weren't gay _women_, it didn't matter that they hadn't jumped straight from shtupping in the most inappropriate places to shared-tenancy, interior-decorators-hired-and-fired, piano-in-the-front-lounge and loafers-muddled-in-with-sneakers style shacking up. He _hoped_ it didn't matter that the sole thing they shared in the place was the one he'd just pissed all over.

He would have shaken his head at that, if it hadn't hurt so much. He told himself firmly that metaphors were House's business. The mattress was no symbol of their relationship. Whether or not it survived, his scarred heart gave a sharp twist at the certainty that they would not. Their friendship was a sure thing, a bit rough-edged and brutal at times, but solid, strong. Their relationship, such as it was, was not. It had begun with a divorce and ended with an overdose, begun again with a death and would end over a rape charge. There was a vicious kind of symmetry to it; they were equal to a fault. After that third divorce, Wilson had stopped believing in the chance of a third time lucky. He stared bleakly at the mattress, wishing he hadn't.

Between the foot of the bed and the bureau, the sheets and blankets were bundled up in a splodgy-looking black bag and the ties were stretched to breaking point on another; a pillow corner and a fat bit of duvet poked out where the plastic had ripped on one side. The number of a laundry company that would collect and deliver had been torn off the list he kept pinned to the fridge with a magnet and taped to the top of the straining bag. Presumably he was supposed to call them.

Glad of the occupation, he reached automatically toward the nightstand for his cell, only to remember that it, along with his coat, briefcase and laptop, were still at the hospital in his unlocked office. His pager and the suit he'd got covered in morphine yesterday were probably in one of the steel lockers behind the crime scene tape. He detoured back to the bathroom for House's cell, went over to get the number off the bag, and dialled through to the cleaners. A recorded voice on the answer phone informed him that the place didn't open until nine. It was six minutes after, but he left a message, his name and the number of the brisk elderly lady in the flat opposite.

Maud had been a housekeeper back around what Wilson sometimes suspected had been the eighteen hundreds. She headed up the housing committee and always had her nose in everyone's business. It was just as well. She frequently kept the credit-card co-eds on the top floor from burning the building to the ground during well-lubricated toaster incidents and she was quite content to bustle from floor to floor using her enormous bunch of keys to let deliverymen, cleaners and various visitors in and out. Wilson left her a message too and then, because he didn't want to put the phone down, rang his own line at the hospital. He spoke briefly to his assistant to affirm that no, House hadn't let him lapse into a coma and die, yes, he was feeling as good as could be expected and would she mind rescuing his belongings from the showers and locking them in his office.

He hung up and a wave of giddiness made his legs go wobbly. The room faded in and out of focus and he had to sit on the edge of the wet mattress. Unable to put his head between his knees, he gripped the edging with his good hand and leaned over as he could. Between his feet, the horizontal fibre-grain lines in the tawny broadloom began to ripple and eddy, like water playing over the bubble-gripped floor of the hospital shower cabin. His ears rang and the bedroom dissolved, twirling down the drain inches from his nose. He struggled to keep his head above water. Two sets of feet splashed around him, one behind, astride him, the other in front, kicking up a cold wave that slashed against his face. _Hold him still!_ A knee slammed into his back, pinning him there like a butterfly in a book.

There was a moment of stillness. More water lapped at his lips, as if it too were toying with him. Then the first attacker stepped closer, dropping to one knee beside his face. The movement swished water into his mouth. It shot past his teeth, still warm, and hit the back of his throat. He choked, tasting metal and chlorine and the bitter soapy aftertaste of shampoo. _Get him up – on his knees. I've got an idea._ His arm was grabbed – his right arm – and twisted in up behind his back. Water crashed across his face and he reared upwards, helpless, a yell rattling in his throat. He gagged on it, on water, on air—

"Stop!"

He'd grabbed instinctively at his arm and his fingers locked around soft folds of his battered cotton McGill sweater, scrunching them up over the solid block of his cast beneath. Shallow, stuttering breaths kept his head swimming, but the replay broke and Wilson sagged back onto the mattress, trembling all over. Once. Once hadn't been enough? What screwy piece of neurological wiring made it necessary to relive it over and over again? Giving up on any pretence of manly stoicism, he staggered up and made for the door.

House must've heard him, because no sooner had Wilson started moving, than his tired, roughened voice barked from the direction of the lounge:

"Wilson! Quit moping and get out here. Your coffee's going cold."

"You made coffee?"

He paused and wrung his finger around in his ear to clear out the residual water that must have lodged there, interfering with his hearing. Vicodin, cane and clothes were as complicated as House could manage before eleven a.m. He was emphatically _not_ a morning person. Either Wilson dealt with that immeasurably tricky piece of equipment called a percolator or House waited until he could con his fellows into it.

Wilson fumbled the door open and, holding himself stiff to avoid joggling his shoulder, head or side, tottered down the corridor like a wooden wind-up toy.

It was full daylight outside, but the lounge was cast in a soft Tyndall-scattered blue as if it were pre-dawn. The blinds in the adjoining open-plan kitchen had been pulled down; only a narrow rectangle of yellow from the light on the extractor fan above the cooker was lit up. The drapes on the lounge picture window were closed too. A few thin sunbeams snuck through where the curtains joined and a faint Jacob's ladder stretched across the empty floor between the wall and the couch.

House was sat on the latter, a partially mauled doughnut in hand. Heaped up in front of him were several green take-out boxes. They were stamped with the insignia of the local café, which delivered to-die-for cheese and bacon slices and other artery clogging delights. Beside them, two giant sized cartons of coffee were stashed in a cardboard holder.

"Aha. You _bought_ coffee."

House shrugged, looking decidedly shifty. "I used your credit card."

Wilson didn't bother to ask how his wallet had got from the back pocket of yesterday's suit, which should now be in his office, onto the stocky, low-slung wooden coffee table between the couch and the TV. House could've swiped it at any point. There was a comforting familiarity to that particular brand of personal violation.

Wilson navigated the laden table, and a whole host of House's junk strewn all over the rug, and dithered beside the free seat on the cream leather couch. House had left him his own favourite spot on the right, so Wilson could keep his injuries between himself and the couch arm, where he wasn't in danger of being accidentally elbowed or bumped. But it took several aborted attempts to figure out a way to sit down there. The couch was at least a foot closer to the floor than the tall box-frame bed and he couldn't use the arm to brace himself. Finally, sort of hugging his cast against his ribs in a primitive urge to put pressure on the painful parts, he propped his other hand on the back and inched down onto the squashy cushions. He paused upright, to catch his breath, and settled slowly, tucking his injured shoulder into the nook where the couch arm curved upward to join the back.

House watched the process with a clinical veneer firmly affixed over whatever he was feeling. Knowing well that the mask of professional disinterest was never wasted on patients, Wilson suspected him of rehearsing his next spiel of mockery. He hooked an eyebrow in silent challenge.

"Those slings are useless," House said, with the abrupt air of one who'd just veered off on a tangent. Whatever was on his mind, it wasn't teasing, and he wasn't sharing. He wagged the mutilated bear-claw doughnut in the vague direction of Wilson's chest and scattered sugar all over the leg of his jeans. "Oops."

His glance could hardly be called contrite. Despite the circumstances and the faux-widening of his eyes, Wilson saw it cross his mind to lick it off. His skin tingled with the imagined feel of House's tongue playing tackily along the sugar coated cotton inseam, his hot breath being sieved through the meshed denim fibres to dampen a patch on Wilson's thigh. He dropped his hand reflexively and knocked the sugar off.

"There's a whole butt-load of medical evidence now that says sticking your arm in a cheesecloth noose does nothing to facilitate the healing process," House went on as though nothing had happened. He bit off a chunk of claw and showed glimpses of partially masticated doughnut as he spoke. His intense blue eyes gave Wilson another once over and flicked up towards the ceiling in his familiar you're-an-idiot expression. His voice shifting to match, he added: "Yo, Dr. Doped-up-on-Painkillers, you need to keep moving that hand."

Wilson glanced down at where his right hand was poking out under the hem of his sweater and flexed his the fingers experimentally. They felt stiff and tight. Although less stiff than the ones with which he'd belted the nightstand. Cautious of the burn that seared from clavicle to fingertips, he began to work his way through the recommended hand exercises. Granted, he didn't do much surgery these days, but bureaucracy cornered him into delegating it often enough to make him unwilling to add restricted mobility too.

"The sling supports the stretched ligaments and muscles and keeps the arm slightly elevated to improve the blood flow," he countered. Then disconcerted by the play of chill air against his midsection where the hem of his sweatshirt was rucking up over the edge of the cast, frowned. "Okay, no. That's doing nothing."

The knot on the shoulder had been loosened during his dressing and undressing and his fingers were touching his hip. He moved instinctively to tightening it and bit back a yelp, as his right arm remained trapped in the sling. _Obviously._ Growling under his breath at his own helplessness, he said unintentionally sharply,

"Can you get that?"

House rammed the rest of his doughnut into his mouth. Dusting his hands off on his pants, he shuffled around on the couch and grabbed for the ties, sticking out of the sweatshirt's stretched round neck. Wilson rocked back and walloped his hand out of the air. They both swore, simultaneous and emphatic.

"You _asked_ me to," House pointed out waspishly, shaking his smacked fingers.

"I know. I'm sorry."

The response tripped off Wilson's tongue mechanically, but he was fixated on House, feeling his eyes bug as he sized him up. It was a toss-up which of them was the stronger. Since the infarction House's leverage was non-existent and his balance easily compromised. But his thin, bony frame was deceptive. He was as lean and rangy as a racehorse. When Wilson had first met him he'd been pure whipcord muscle, indefatigable, all systems firing on constant adrenaline highs, ricocheting from obsession to epiphany and back again. Whenever they'd hung out, they'd run and played football, basketball and tennis together, taking it in turns to thrash one another soundly.

The sports were a thing of the past, but House hadn't really changed all that much. He was fit for a cripple, that restive tirelessness seething in the uncooperative confines of his damaged frame. The Vicodin had stripped him down thinner than ever, but it gave him the highs when the adrenaline was just keeping him going. His incessant pacing and stubborn refusal to give into his limitations kept him agile and his upper body was solid muscle mass. He was still strong. Wilson felt the shock of it every time they grappled, jousting for supremacy on the bed and couch and floor. He could take House. Mostly. But House was wily and not afraid of hurting him. When Wilson lost it was because he couldn't quite override the sense not to play dirty and pin House's leg. Now he was injured. If House wanted to – he didn't have that self-restraint – he could do as he liked – Wilson couldn't stop him—

"Wilson. _Wilson._" House snapped his fingers, the sharp crack startling him into a sweat. His attention flinched from House's fingers to his face and was snared there by blue eyes, narrow and astute. "Quit it with the Darwinian fight or flight crap."

Wilson felt his face change and realised his thoughts had been written all over it. House half-nodded, acknowledging the end of the one-sided standoff and lowered the hand he'd kept up to ward off any other inadvertent strikes. Rubbing his thigh as though he too had half-anticipated a struggle that hadn't come, he said firmly:

"Quit it with the violence too. I hereby decree no paralympic cripple wrestling shall take place in Casa del Cutthroat. It's tacky."

"I wasn't—" Wilson didn't know why he was trying to deny it.

"You were." House hitched one shoulder in a shrug. He tossed a glance at Wilson, brief and wry. "Been there, thought that, got the idiot badge." He reached for his coffee and slurped noisily to cover the admission. He set it down and added, "Stop being a wuss and let me fix your sling."

"Okay."

Reassured in equal parts by the rare show of empathy, and lack thereof, Wilson grasped the hem of his sweater with his left hand. It was partly to keep the stupid thing under conscious, not reflex, control and partly to keep his sweater from getting scooped up when the sling underneath it was tightened. Wary now, House reached slowly for the ties and Wilson swallowed an involuntary gulp of air. If House slipped or swayed or reached out to steady himself, he'd tumble into him or ram his hand into his injured side. The unbuttoned flaps of House's shirt skimmed the edge of Wilson's sweater, a tiny prickle of sensation that sent his heart rate rocketing in anticipation of being banged. He tried to will it slower, rationalising: House was sitting; his balance was fine; this was paranoia. House flicked a glance at him and eased back a fraction. He opened his left knee away from the couch so that he could twist around more for access and, almost unconsciously, hitched his ruined thigh a little higher up into the squishy cushions, away from Wilson's left knee. Wilson eased his breath out gradually. House knew what this felt like, at least.

"You're still not boring." House plucked dexterously at the granny knot, his voice unchanged from its usual brash baritone, but soothing all the same. "I figured you'd be the freeze like a rabbit in the headlights type. Spend the next forever being monosyllabic and having staring contests with the wall, not trying to clock me and biting my head off."

Wilson tried to listen to him instead of focusing on the pepper and salt scruff blurring the line of House's jaw, inches away from his own. The skittering touch of his fingertips was churning him up inside. They brushed Wilson's collarbone through the stretched neck of the sweater, as House wound the ends of the sling around his fingers to keep the weight of the cast from jolting it down. He kept expecting it to hurt and, when it didn't, found he didn't know what to do with the constant anticipatory fasciculations. He twisted his fingers into the hem of his sweater, knuckles pushed up against the rough outer seam of House's jean-clad leg, and said, in an unsteady voice:

"So the annoying me yesterday and the giving me a heart-attack in the bathroom – that was medicinal?"

"Diagnostic."

House drew the ends of the sling upward slowly and smoothly, until the cast rested at a slightly inclined diagonal in the triangular sling. Quicksilver fingers looped the first crossover of the ends around three times instead of one, tying it off in a surgeon's knot. He lingered, messing with the ends, tucking them under the neck of the sweater. Wilson tipped his head slightly and chanced a look into his face, ignoring the faint throb in favour of the bloom of warmth as his bruised cheek brushed the back of House's hand.

"Because _asking_ me if I was okay would've been too easy?"

House turned his left hand over and fitted his palm to Wilson's jaw. His callused thumb skimmed over the scratchy stubble growth, catching there.

"I knew you weren't," he said, matter of factly.

He turned his head and gave Wilson one of those looks of his, very level and clear. At some time, whilst he wasn't sleeping, he had talked himself down from the previous day's boiling, desperate fury. His face had settled into the familiar lines of obsession. There was a calmness there, an intensity, that were close cousins to madness. But Wilson didn't doubt that House was utterly sane. He simply didn't believe in wasting time on indulgent anguish. There was no need for it. He had a knack for solving problems when other people could not and he had no respect for limits, especially those that other people called the impossible.

His certainty wasn't as contagious as rage or terror, which could spread like syphilis in a brothel, but Wilson wanted it. Wanted it and there was one sure way he knew to pass it between them. Without a word of warning, he let go of his shirt to snake a hand into House's hair and pull him forward, closing the gap between them. Their noses bumped and Wilson kissed him. It was quick, a clumsy scuff of lips that was only half thought out and fully expected to hurt. It didn't, though, not in any way that mattered. A small, unnoticed split in his lip stung a little, but whether it were stolen from House himself or whether it came in the first rush of heat and affection and endorphins, his badly shaken confidence stabilised itself and he kissed House again, harder.

It wasn't a fix. That it would only briefly make him feel better, that afterwards would be so much worse, he knew and he didn't damn well care. A temporary reprieve was better than none. The surge of pleasure and relief as their lips locked outweighed the alarming potency of it. Shoving a gut-swell of panic back down, he clamped his fingers tighter into the greying strands of hair and held on when House tried to draw back. He pushed their mouths together in a series of staccato kisses that grew quicker and more urgent, as he realised he could entirely lose himself in the warm exchange of breath and saliva that tasted of spearmint mouthwash, coffee, sugar and…cigarettes? He shunted that unusual addition aside too and kept kissing, no tongue, just lips pressing and pulling, suckling and swiping, the soft, plush feel of House's mouth against his own, and that rough, prickling edge of stubble that rubbed raw and intense around the edges of the kiss. _Oh, he needed this. Control. Closeness. Safety. House. _He closed his eyes and let the tension reel out of him.

"W'son." Muffled, half-swallowed, House's lips formed his name, pushing it at him in whuff of breath. He butted his head into Wilson's fingers and squirmed, trying again to break away.

"Don't. _Don't_," Wilson muttered, clutching at his hair, mouth chasing, but House twisted his head to the side and his stubble burned against Wilson's over-sensitised lips. "Don't. _Please_—"

_"_Uff. Stop." House ducked his chin back against his chest, allowing only their foreheads to continue touching. "Bad idea."

_No. No, it wasn't. House, please, don't do this._ The tension in Wilson's chest came crowding back, so thick and heavy that he thought his heart might have actually torn in two and flooded the cavity with blood. He could taste it, and bile again, shower water, soap, and saline… Could House taste it too? Horrified, he let go of House's hair to scrub at his mouth instead, trying to swipe away any trace of it that he, Wilson, might have passed on. The statistical odds of disease contagion from saliva whirred through his head: almost none, but _not _none, not completely.

"_Fuck_. I'm so sorry—" The words heaved out of him, ragged and breathless. His eyes were so wide they stung. He kept wiping, frantically.

"Hoy!" House seized his wrist and rattled it, dragging it down to pin it down beside Wilson's thigh with his right hand. His other stayed firmly woven into the soft strands of hair behind Wilson's right ear, his thumb smoothing a stripe where a sideburn would go. "Less of that." He canted his chin forward and pressed a last, light kiss over Wilson's now firmly closed lips. "It's okay. It wasn't that."

"Then why—?" Bewildered, upset, and getting angry about both, Wilson tried to shove him away. House's breath oofed out at the thud of Wilson's hand into his chest, but he only frowned, his right hand hovering in mid-air, where Wilson had tossed his head away from it. "Why _think_? Why ruin it?"

"Because it can't _go_ anywhere," House gave his hair a little tug and then released him, shuffling around on the couch so that they were slumped shoulder to shoulder again. "Unless you want to page Chase for more props so we can rub _crutches_ together."

"Thanks, for that visual." Wilson flopped his head back against the rest in exasperation. His arm ached fiercely. The pain in his side had left him breathless and either that or the mood swings were making him dizzy. "Why does it _have_ to go anywhere? You'd do me if that were an option, but a hug – that's too damn gay?"

House shot him a look that said quite plainly that he thought Wilson had left most of his brain on the shower room floor. He puffed out his cheeks and swished air back and forth noisily, puzzled and contemplative. He exhaled in a huff and sat up a bit.

"C'mere."

Sinking in a mire of suspicion that it was not anything to do with testosterone poisoning or House's inability to take a single brick out of the wall of personal space that always enclosed him, but – in spite of the denial – everything to do with what he thought had happened yesterday, Wilson flicked a sidelong glance at him, chary.

"Why?"

"Oh for—"

Ignoring Wilson's flinch as he threw his arm up, House slung it along the back of the couch, propped his elbow there and, arm hooked around the back of Wilson's neck, knotted his fingers through his fluffy hair. House flopped against him, a bit bony and awkward, since he was never immediately at ease about casual displays of affection, but managed to settle his cheek against Wilson's ear. Bunching up a bit of the peeling McGill logo emblazoned across the chest of the sweater in his fist, he rested his hand over Wilson's sternum.

"That's why. _Idiot._"

Wilson froze up, struggling to draw breath around the sensation that his heart had stuck itself back together and done a hop into his throat. He went shaky and teetered between the urge to burrow in closer and to push House away so he didn't do exactly that. In a voice all edgy with disbelief, he muttered:

"What are you doing?"

House huffed irritably, but didn't move. "Abseiling off the Empire State Building. Duh."

"You hate hugs."

"It's not a hug!" House asserted instantly, affronted. "Perish the thought. This is medicinal. _Treatment._ Prescription only. The skin is the largest organ in the body. The stimulation of that organ caused by touch is clinically proven to boost the immune system. It provokes the release of oxytocin, the hormone that depresses activity in the regions of the amygdala and hypocampus associated with stress and fear, and triggers responses in ventral tegmental area of the brain stem – locus of the dopamine pathways responsible for pleasure – evoking feelings of contentment, calmness and security.

"Alternative stimuli are available at all known sex shops and in the third drawer down of your bureau. This way is inflation-proof, non-taxable, theft-proof, doesn't need batteries, and can be exchanged after use. But if you're going to whine about it," he added severely, "I'll get you the injectable version instead."

"'m not whining," Wilson said swiftly. He swallowed his heart back down where it belonged and brought his left hand up to hook lightly in the crook of House's elbow, where it rested against his uninjured ribs, just above his sling.

House snuffed emphatically. "_Good._"

*

Comfort, Wilson discovered, was not what he might call _comfortable._ For one thing, House was not at all easy in giving it, at least not so directly as this. He had his own ways of going about such things and social conventions did not come into it. Oh, he ordered his long limbs into all the right places to be called an embrace, but once there he shifted and shuffled and squirmed about in a thoroughly unsettled manner. The lopsided distribution of his extra weight and his incessant jiggling made Wilson lock his lips together over an involuntary snarl. Red-hot skewers were jammed up under his ribs with every wiggle, his shoulder was shunted into the arm of the couch, and its resentful throbbing was offset by random, accidental jerks of House's fingers in his hair. He could grit his teeth and ignore the physical discomfort, just about. Harder to ignore was how backward it seemed not to be the one hauling House against his chest and holding _him_ together, while pain clawed him apart from the inside and he threatened Wilson with in-the-field amputations for so much as daring to see him like that.

He should've stuck with precedent and stolen the damn hug, so that House could do as he always did, huffing and mock-sulking his way past his lone wolf routine. Pulling some sophomore psyche rotation crap to get him to make the move was a damnable kind of stupidity, given the resounding lesson Wilson had got yesterday in keeping his mouth shut. He was on the brink of gently telling House to shove off, when the bony berk slumped against him and the angles and planes of their respective torsos slotted into alignment like Tetris blocks. House exhaled in a loud, humid puff that snuck down inside the neck of the McGill sweatshirt and rubbed his scratchy jaw against Wilson's own. _Warm pricklies._ House couldn't stick to the rules about anything. Wilson wouldn't put it past him to try giving out _cold fuzzies_ too.

Confusing bastard. He wanted to smile, a thready thing but a smile nonetheless, because House looked contented now, like a large feline that had mauled its cushion into submission. Wilson felt his spine straighten at that and apparently _he_ was the confusing bastard, because immediately he wasn't comfortable at all. The extra weight had hiked the pain to a pitch that made him want to hiss and, held like this, he couldn't do a thing about it. Couldn't move. Couldn't struggle. His muscles bunched, twitching with the need to see if he could throw the grip off. But the fatigue fluttering instantly through them assured him that he couldn't. _Don't try._ _Don't try. You'll hurt yourself._ _You'll hurt_ him. _It's okay. If you let this happen, then it's okay. You asked for it. You must have wanted it…_

His stomach tumbled queasily and his teeth began to clatter, a shiver rattling up his spine. Whiteness hovered in his peripheries and the beads of sweat that broke out along his hairline felt like running water. He groped blindly for the nearest part of House to ground himself, stuttering an automatic apology as he grabbed his friend's right thigh, fingers digging incautiously into the depression left where the necrotic muscle had been removed. House loosed his fistful of sweatshirt and latched their fingers together. He drew Wilson's arm across his body so that he could rest their joined hands on his healthy thigh instead, half pinning himself to the couch in the process.

Wilson clung to his hand grimly, steadying himself with the fierceness of the answering grip, which matched him squeeze for squeeze without upping the ante. He pressed himself to the lean, flat, solidity of House's torso and turned his face into the creased, skin-warmed, brown shirt, which was ripe from getting sodden in the locker room and drying whilst worn. He took a deep, reassuring drag of House's pungent signature beneath: the sweat of pain and vigour, wood and wire instruments, mothballs and medicine. Nestling his elbow into the warm crook of House's inguinal region, he tried to distract himself by discerning from the cool pressure through his sweatshirt sleeve which of the angles of the cassette belt buckle were digging into his forearm.

He felt House's free hand curry through the dishevelled tangle of his hair, brushing the sweat away from his brow. House tucked his chin down into his own clavicle and muttered in Wilson's ear,

"How's that denial working out for you?"

"What denial?" Wilson demanded, a huffy half-chuckle that was more a gasp of relief escaping, as the rumble of House's voice made the thick mists of the shower room retreat. He stuck House in the gut with his elbow, reproaching him for the reminder. House contorted sideways into an angular u-shape, arching away with an _uff_ of forcibly expelled air.

"Says he," House countered breathlessly, "Whilst standing on the banks of four thousand, one hundred and eighty-four miles of river."

He settled against the couch back, straddling the cushions of the two-seater. They were no longer cinched around each other but, with a sly half-glance in Wilson's direction, House scooted his legs further apart so that his bare right foot nudged against the side of Wilson's socked left.

"Hey," Wilson protested at the comment. He shifted too, enough that their shoulders still brushed. "Doesn't this prescription come in mock-free alternative?"

"Nope. That's still in the trial stages."

"Figures." He startled as House twitched beside him and bit back a groan, clamping his palm to his creaking ribs. House seized his own thigh, long fingers clutching, claw-like, as the remaining muscles there bucked in one of their frequent spasms. "Sorry, did I hurt you?"

"No." House exhaled through clenched teeth. "Giant untreated blood clot and Cuddy's crack surgical team hurt me. You grabbing me just now was a reminder."

He kneaded his leg with the heel of his right hand and with the other groped in his pocket for his Vicodin. Flicking the cap off, he knocked two back before offering the vial to Wilson.

"No, thanks." He stretched painfully and managed to get the Tylenol off the table beside the doughnut boxes instead. "I'm pumped full of antibiotics, OTCs, Vicodin and Cyclizine—and the anti-retrovirals," he added quickly when House slanted a suspicious look at him. "I didn't forget those. I don't want to take any more medications I don't need."

House eyed him, clearly trying to decide if that last part was a jab. It wasn't, but he looked disgruntled anyway. In his view, Wilson's pain threshold was freakishly high.

He champed noisily at his tablets, before evidently deciding to forego any further commentary on what it would take to make Wilson understand the meaning of _chronic pain_ in anything other than textbook format. Either he was sick of making his own case or he figured that if Wilson didn't get an inkling of it now, then he was simply too dense to bother haranguing.

Putting his left foot on the table, House used both hands to hoist his right leg up to join it. He stretched the twitching muscles out cautiously and changed tack.

"You hungry?"

It wasn't really a question, as he toed the nearest box along the edge of the table toward Wilson. He eyed it no enthusiasm whatsoever. His stomach felt raw and tender. By the time he'd finished throwing up on the sidewalk by the car, he'd been hurling bile and threads of blood.

"No."

House fixed him with his favourite you're-an-idiot expression and gestured at the IV equipment, cluttering up the narrow section of wall between the curtained picture window and the TV.

"You're wrong if you think making me use that will clinch the sympathy vote. The cripple corner of the market is mine. Back off."

Leaning forward, he hooked a finger around the edge of the cardboard cup carrier. He pulled it close enough that he could pluck out a carton of coffee and held it out. Wilson took that with a patronised little salute, swallowing his tablets with the first sip of cooling coffee. House leaned back into the seat whilst Wilson drank, but he couldn't seem to get comfortable. He took his feet off the table to sit forward with his hands dangling between his knees, jogging Wilson's elbow in the process, then immediately sat back again, fitting his thumbnail into the grooves between the plastic and the rubber buttons on the remote, which lay beside him on the couch. Abruptly, he scooted it into the rut between the seat cushions and the arm, and reached for his own coffee.

Wilson set his down on the table and followed House's movements warily, recognising that restive mood altogether too well. In front of him the TV screen was still dark, although House had inadvertently switched it to standby. A little red light and an anticipatory buzz emanated softly from the base of the screen.

House took a fortifying gulp of coffee and sunk his teeth into the rolled cardboard rim. His voice muffled by the cup pressed against his chin, he said, "We need to talk."

The words sounded alien coming from his mouth instead of Wilson's. Not quite spaceships landing in the garden alien, but just that little bit off. Like the fact that Wilson had never actually noticed that the TV had a standby light or that it made that annoying buzzing sound either.

It didn't help matters that he found himself instantly parroting House's customary line, albeit without the hostile inflection: "No, we don't."

In another situation the role-reversal might have amused them. But neither one cracked a smile.

"New rule," House proposed, cradling his cup in his left hand and resting the base on his knee. "You talk now and I'll drive later, so you can run away to whatever it is in New York that you run away to whenever things go wrong here."

There was bitterness in that. Black as his coffee dregs glinting in a stray sunbeam, which had broken away from the ladder jutting through the curtains. Unintentional, Wilson thought, but there was every reason for it. He shied his eyes away from the thin lines of tension tugging at House's mouth and met the accusing, red, cyclopsian eye of the light on Amber's television. It was her sofa too, her table, her carpet, her curtains, her everything. When she'd died, he'd left House half-dead too and quit Princeton Plainsboro for New York Mercy. He'd hung onto her apartment, to her, and tossed everything else into the four corners of the state. They'd never really talked about that. They never really talked about _anything._

All the same, he'd rather talk about that than this.

"It's not about being in New York," he said, mindful of the tension furrows being raked into House's brow. "It's about not being _here._ I'm…" he licked his lips, growing more cautious by the second. It was a fear they both shared, this: "I'm not leaving. It's just a weekend, House, and you're coming too."

_There._ Brief, bright, but unmistakable: a glimmer of relief. A miniscule shifting of features and House had shut it quickly away. Had he thought Wilson intended him to drive to New York, drop him off with the twins and immediately send him home again, unwelcome? Firmly, he suppressed the knowledge that he'd thought of that himself. House could be too much to deal with at the best of times and Wilson was still afraid House would kick him out of his own accord soon enough.

He gave his head a tiny dissuasive shake, hoping, if it came to that, that House would be able to bend his blasted blind genius around how hard it had been for Wilson to come back to Princeton, how much he had meant that Wilson had done that. How much he had meant that Wilson had had to leave in the first place. How much it _sucked_, all outside intervention aside, that here they were, on the brink of breakdown yet again.

_Sometimes it matters so much that you have to make it not matter at all._ Fortune cookie wisdom, of course, but true nonetheless.

"Hey," he said gently, brushing his fingers over the mottled skin on the back of House's hand, careful not to knock his thigh again. "Hey, I'm not going to—"

"_Hey_, yourself." House roused from whatever naval-gazing Wilson had managed to steer him into and grabbed his wrist, his grip knowing and reproachful. "Nice try. Using your dead girlfriend as a get out of jail card isn't going to wash this time."

Busted, Wilson cursed softly and tried to make a quip out of it. "Damn. I was sure you were narcissistic enough to—"

"Talk about things _I_ don't want to talk about." House let go of his wrist to wield a reproving forefinger. No way, pal. The spotlight is all yours for a change."

Wilson's abandoned fingers twitched apprehensively on the couch cushion. He was not, on the whole, a fan of the limelight. He shifted his hand quickly to his knee, picking at an errant bit of sugar that had got lodged in the indents between the seam and the stitching.

"This wasn't the deal."

"No, the deal was you call that shrink. Since you gave his card swimming lessons in ammonia last night, that deal's off. New one is on the table."

Wilson ferreted for the sugar grain with increasing urgency. He'd learned a long time ago to shut his brain down when he ran across something overwhelming. It was a lousy coping mechanism, as far as such things went, but he'd done well enough by it in the past. He had half a dozen or so tricks for it: he kept busy; he found someone else with a different problem to take care of; he ran; or he simply put himself to sleep. He'd take tablets, if necessary, but, like every other doctor in the world, he had a sleep-debt that had been accumulating since medical school and he rarely suffered from insomnia. Those tricks hadn't let him down yet. Apart from the flashbacks, he'd made it through the last nineteen hours in the static blankness of residual shock. He was not in the least bit ready to let that go.

"No." He shook his head, cringing as the movement rattled the solid block of ache wedged inside his skull. " You promised—"

"I lied."

"Of course you did." Wilson sighed, looking down at the table and the coffee he hadn't wanted any more than he'd wanted to have this conversation come up again. He half-glanced at House, offering a troubled look and an apologetic hitch of his good shoulder. "There's nothing to talk about."

"You were assaulted yesterday," House retorted bluntly. "Strikes me that there could be a little material there to base a conversation on."

Stalling, Wilson picked up his drink again and slurped as he thought of another diversion. "You want that? You want me to tell you how I'm _feeling_? Wow. House, when did you get that third major in psychology?"

"This isn't an invitation to pour your heart out and wipe your nose on my shirt," House retorted, shooting Wilson a glance that told him exactly what he thought of the continuous evasion. _The hypocrite._ "I need you to tell me what _happened._ The sport's commentator's version."

"For the seven hundredth time: I don't remember anything." Knowing better than to expect House to drop it based on a straight statement, Wilson retreated behind more sarcasm, medicine, and the rim of his cup. "D'you need to check my chart there, doctor? Foreman had an actual term for it and everything: ret-ro-grade am-nes-ia."

"Yeah," House drawled, all admonishment that Wilson would dredge up such a weak-assed argument. "More like _selective amnesia_. The thing about that diagnosis is it requires us to assume the patient is telling the truth. I don't, on account of how they tend to _lie._"

Wilson shifted his weight from one butt cheek to the other uneasily and countered, "So do you. Case in point."

"Well, if that isn't Foreman calling…_himself_ black," House snorted. "_You_ normally lie _better_."

"I'm not lying!"

_And what if he were?_ Wilson thought, getting hot about the collar as prying blue eyes did sweeps of his face and a flush spread from the tips of his ears, across his cheeks, and down his neck. House hadn't needed any help in the past to find out every last detail of Wilson's life and he wasn't fool enough to take Wilson's word on anything anyway, no matter what that word might be.

House stuck his cup back in the carrier and propped his elbows on his knees, fixing Wilson with an over-the-shoulder look that was at once cynical and oddly gentle.

"Yeah, you are," he said. He spelt it out, with an unsettling air of one who was quite sure he didn't need to. "You don't have retrograde amnesia resulting from a grade three concussion. You were not knocked out for thirty minutes yesterday or there would have been brain swelling evident on the C.T. You wouldn't be lucid now. You'd be having short-term memory disruption, like forgetting the date and the time, not just what happened less than a day ago. You'd have crippling light sensitivity, vertigo, and a whole host of other symptoms—"

"Nausea," Wilson interrupted, getting a first-hand reminder. House's self-certainty, which had been so compelling half an hour ago, now made his stomach contract and his throat hitch with the urge to upchuck all over the carpet. "Headache, dizziness, mood-swings, stop me when I mention something that _isn't_ happening."

"You banged your head and you feel crappy," House countered with a touch of impatience. "You have a grade one concussion, maybe a two at the most. You do not have a grade three. If you did, I wouldn't have given you cyclizine or lorazepam last night and, if I had, you'd have reamed me for it this morning."

_Goddamn secret diagnoses!_ Wilson avoided his accusing eyes.

"There _are_ other reasons for temporary amnesia."

"You're having flashbacks," House pointed out. "Can't flashback on nothing."

"You're fishing." Wilson searched House's shrewd profile for the same traitorous tells House seemed convinced he'd discerned in his. "You _think_ I know something and you're trying to dupe me into telling you."

House shook his head at that, his fingers drumming lightly over his kneecaps. He cast a sidelong, flickering look at Wilson in response to a soft crunching noise. He realised he was gripping his coffee carton so hard he'd almost punched his fingers through the sides. He loosened his grip, one finger at a time.

House took it from him and absently took a swig. He smacked his lips and delivered his punchline:

"Then you admit that there's something to tell."

_Damn him._ Wilson blew out his breath in an exasperated sigh and affected a compromise.

"I can tell you what I told the police."

House scoffed. "Save your breath. I was watching through the window to conference room they stowed you in. That guy was the Van Dyke of doodling. You told him nothing."

Verbally cornered, Wilson bounced his uninjured knee up and down, the urge to bolt out of the room fraying at every nerve fibre. But he was pretty sure he couldn't get up without getting grabbed. His chest tightened with impending panic. He'd done it again. Twice in the space of twenty-four hours. Why couldn't he keep his fool tongue behind his teeth?

House had talked himself into trouble a time or ten. It had never crossed Wilson's mind that the same thing could happen to him. His quicksilver tongue was revered at the hospital as if it was solid silver and imbued with magic powers of persuasion. His reputation there was three pronged: he was a superb oncologist, an eloquent negotiator and an easy lay. If yesterday's stupendous rebuke was karmic, then he'd apparently spent half his life waving around HaSatan's pitchfork as if it were a trophy, not a means to draw G-d's attention to his failings.

In spite of that, a small part of him kept insisting that he owed House more than the faceless, blue-uniformed officer who thought himself a closet artist. _You need him._ _You need_ this. _Tell him._

_Tell him_ something.

"I…uh… _Ugh,_ House. Okay. Fine." Wilson coughed, reluctantly clearing his throat, and, in as bland a voice as he could summon, reeled off the string of mundanities that, like little stones bouncing down a mountainside, had begun the disaster.

"I called time of death on Tania Walker at fourteen seventeen yesterday afternoon. All the family were there, except her daughter, who had died at seven fifty-six on Sunday morning. Her husband, Nick Walker; her sister, Lindsey Granville, her mother and aunt, Sheila and Anna May, and her sister's husband Jason Granv—"

"Don't care about the clan of lunatics."

"Okay, okay. I did what I usually do, expressed regret for their loss, unhooked the machines, and left them to say their goodbyes, alerting the nurses to handle moving Tania to the morgue afterwards. There was no need for an autopsy and they'd all heard the results of the autopsy on Alicia a few hours before Tania died. Monica and I went down to the lifts."

"Monica?"

"New fellow in Oncology. She's working under Brown. He wanted her to see how an emergency referral can turn out. We were both drained and in need of a coffee, but I said I'd have to hit the showers first. I'd got morphine up my sleeves topping up the machine about thirty minutes before Tania died and her cath came out as she passed away. It had leaked all over me—"

He broke off to clear his throat again.

House passed him back the coffee, commenting: "This _is_ why nurses were invented."

"Yeah, yeah," Wilson said edgily. House's voice had disrupted the fog swirling at the edges of his sightline, reminding him how close he was to getting sucked into another replay_._ "This will go a lot faster if you stop adding your own commentary."

House's eyes narrowed and made an exaggeratedly gracious gesture to indicate Wilson should go on.

"Monica said she'd grab me a coffee and we arranged to meet back at my office to review and close the case files. We were about to part ways when Lindsey came running up. She asked if she'd be able to see a copy of my notes on her sister and niece's files. She's a trainee nurse at Trenton and she had the medical proxy, so it was reasonable request. I don't keep notes like yours: non-existent or with marginalia casting aspersions on the patient's mother, so I arranged to meet her in fifteen minutes by the photocopier just outside the staff room. She must have followed me."

"Any reason to think she was going to try turning you into a chalk outline?"

Wilson jumped and glared, pulled back to the smell of clammy couch leather, staling carbohydrates and cooling coffee in the lounge, instead of the sickly sweetness of death, industrial disinfectant, and synthetic air fresheners of the Oncology wing.

"No. She…" _was just trying to get into my pants every five minutes. Like she was when she did that Gynae rotation at PPTH._ There was no need to tell House that. No need to ring any alarm bells. "No."

He went on, his voice dipping down to a low, scratchy rasp as his throat tightened, hardly aware when House took the slopping coffee cup away from him:

"I had long enough to get undressed and into the shower. They barged in on me a few minutes later." Fog swirled in his peripheries and he clenched his fist, the absence of the cup crackling surprising him back to the lounge once more. He coughed again and summarised hastily. "That's when it all started. That's what I remember."

"Okay." House put the almost empty cup aside. He stayed sat forward, elbows propped on his knees and his hands clasped together, chin resting on them. He shot Wilson a narrow, sidelong glance that dug in at his corneas, as though House were trying to sneak a biopsy of his brain just by looking at him. "That's the same story you fed the detective."

"House!" Wilson objected, hurt, "I haven't lied to you—" He cut himself off with a weary wave of his hand. "Which is exactly what someone who was lying to you would say."

"I didn't say you weren't telling the truth. You're lying by omission.

Wilson reached nervously for the back of his neck and dug trembling fingers into the soft flesh surrounding his c-vertebrae. He coughed painfully, re-clearing his throat for what felt like the millionth time. The ache in his head was intensifying by the second; he wanted to shut his eyes, but was didn't dare in case he opened them to the white tiles of the shower enclosure and the misty-clad figures backing him up against the taps.

"Okay, fine," he repeated, soft and shaky, giving away more vulnerability than he thought either one of them could stand. His voice was so low he didn't recognise it any longer. "You're right. That _is_ what I told the detective. I-I do remember more. A _little_ more," he added hastily, holding up his hand to forestall any expressions of triumph.

_I just wish I didn't._

"They didn't come in together," he went on, the words crawling out of his throat, scraping what felt like hobnailed boots along his vocal cords. "The…the first one came in t-to talk. Apparently that couldn't wait until I was dressed. I, uh, I asked, but, ahm, t-that seemed to be provoking. I-I got c-cornered in the c-cubicle."

_Fuck._ He was five years old again, stammering, because his brain ran too fast for his mouth and because he was shy and because the worse the stammer got the more ashamed he became. _Fuckety-fuck_, because he'd started off at shame and it was getting worse. He stopped trying to talk and wrapped his fingers around his knee in an unconscious repetition of his father's comforting grip. It ached under his touch, but he didn't let go.

House waited silently beside him, turning his right foot ever so slightly to make their calves and knees touch, forming a warm, firm, line of contact between their bodies that stretched, dotted, from foot to knee and hip to shoulder.

"I couldn't get out," Wilson whispered, gleaning strength from the contact; House seemed to have an inexhaustible supply. "T-there was no way. Not without in-in-intiti— _fuck_, I'm sorry – _initiating_ some s-sort of contact. I-I-I f-figured t-that would b-be escalating the sit-situation, s-so I-I waited."

_Annoying. Annoying. Stop it. C'mon._ _Get it together._ Wilson gouged his knuckles into his forehead and sucked in a tremulous breath. His lungs felt rattley and tattered, as though every breath he took were punching holes through the tissue and getting lost through the gaps, leaving him hollow and airless. His teeth were chattering now too. Talking was risking a tongue injury.

_Convenient. Seeing as how you don't want to talk. It's conversion. It's conversion. It's conversion._

_It's better than the alternative._

He scraped around at the bottom of the courage barrel and half-considered asking House to get him a shot of the Dutch kind. Except that would put him straight back in the hospital as it clashed with every single one of his medications. _Hoh._ He did _not_ want to go back there.

He hauled in another breath and held it for a second before letting go. It was a little better. He took a few more. Tried again.

"It was just shouting to start with. Getting up in my face. Accusing me of screwing up the case. I did, but…I thought I'd straightened things out, as much as I could. Apparently not." He touched the bruise on his jaw, absently fitting his knuckles to the deep purpling imprints on the soft skin over the aching bone. "I got knocked back into the shower pipes. I-I thought it was j-just a shove, y'know, a m-momentary loss of temper." He licked nervously at his dry lips, hunching his shoulders. A stifled whimper slipped unheard past his teeth as his right one pulsed fiercely. "I was wrong, House. Hah!" He almost laughed then, a broken chitter. "I couldn't've been more wrong.

"I-I don't…I'm n-not sure of the exact play-by-play, after. It all happened so fast. The next thing I knew I was being kicked, hit. I was on the floor, on my side, and there was just more and more of it. It wouldn't stop. I-I've n-never felt anything l-like it. T-that kind of strength. Th-that _rage_. I-I couldn't…w-whatever I did…it was like I did nothing. It was useless. Surreal.

"I...I tried to get up, once. Big-big mistake. I g-got grabbed. My arm. Yanked me off my feet. I-I was s-sort of t-twisted and sh-shoved. Fell through a closed cubicle door. T-the glass split. It's not s'posed to _do_ that, House, it-it's just _not."_

He shoved a fist into his mouth, biting down hard as he felt his eyes burn and well. He wasn't sure if he wanted to bawl or if it would be worse if he didn't. He still felt numb, like there was nothing inside him except static: buzzing, lifeless, hollow. But he knew he was shaking. Even the creases in his forehead ached they were driven in so deep. His voice faded in and out, so soft now that he wasn't completely sure that he was still talking or if his lips were just moving, shaping more futile words out of air.

"It cut me. Th-the glass. I went headlong in-into the op-opposite parti-tion. I t-tried to c-catch myself w-with my r-right hand. Broke m-my wrist. H-hit my head on-on th-the floor. I r-rem-mem-b-ber th-the s-second one c-coming in a-at th-that m-moment. _That's_ w-when I-I bl-blacked out."

He finished in a rush, opening his hand and taking it away from his mouth, wiping off against his jeans the spit and words that he could feel clinging clammily to his skin. He hoped he had spoken. That House had heard. He couldn't say it again. It hurt too much. _G-d_, he hurt all over. He stayed that way, curled into the pain, completely unaware that at some stage he'd hunched over his knees, crunching up his ribcage, and that House was rubbing one hand slowly up and down his back.

It took a long time for the warm, dry friction to soothe away the memories of water-slicked skin and the swamped, smothered sensation in his chest. When it finally did, Wilson jerked his hand back off House's leg, relief crashing over him when he realised that even in the throes of his panic, he had only driven his fingers into the flesh behind his kneecap. House kneaded at his bruises silently and didn't let on that he'd had to twice prise Wilson's fingers off his scar.

"Okay." House's gruff voice instead of his own wrested Wilson out of the suffocating fog of memory. He sounded quite casual after the stuttering, sniffling, gasps that had punctuated his own humiliating account. "That's not what happened."

"Wh—huh?" Wilson made an incoherent sound, rendered somewhat breathless by House's frank conviction.

"If you're going to lie to me too, at least get your facts straight." House shuffled his butt around on the seat so that he was facing Wilson, looking between him and his hands as he counted the reasons off on his fingertips. "One: you did not break your wrist when you fell. A: because you wouldn't have put out your non-dominant hand to catch yourself. B: because it's not a Colle's fracture. It's a 'nightstick' fracture, a common defensive injury. You threw your arm up to protect yourself. I'd guess that you were on the floor when you did it, with your left arm behind your back catching yourself from _that_ fall. Two: You remember falling at least once more, because you tried to stop it happening. You went down left knee first, bracing yourself so that you wouldn't go down on _both_ knees. I know that because when you fell over on the sidewalk last night, you went down _right_ knee first, even though that had to have hurt more with your arm and ribs broken. It's not instinctive; you're left side dominant, so you were protecting yourself then too. You strained your left knee running last week, but you've been running since, which means that must be feeling better. Unless you'd damaged it again, you wouldn't have landed right then left. Also, you're favouring it today. You must've banged it up so hard that the bruising hadn't come out yesterday. I'd have seen when you put on the modesty sheet for the pelvic."

"You were watching!" Wilson interrupted, a boiling flush and a surge of anger making it through his slack-jawed astonishment. "Did it ever occur to you that I might not appreciate being perved on right then?"

House blinked slowly, shuttering away the sudden shattered look in his eyes, turning them into shards of blue anger.

"You jerk," he said, so coolly that it made Wilson draw back. "My extensive collection of rape-fantasy porn tipped you off, did it?"

His gigantic collection contained all sorts of creative scenarios, many of which Wilson never wanted to see again. House's fascination extended far beyond the realm of mere getting off; more often than not, that was a bonus rather than the main event. He was something of a connoisseur and apt to offer a conference-paper style commentary on some of his more lurid and bizarre acquisitions. The Vicodin must've addled his hypothalamus.

On the other hand, he had – and it said a lot for his other tastes that Wilson was surprised by it – nothing that contained any hint of rape. Bondage. Spanking. Transvestites in tinfoil hats buggering a donkey. No rape. House had never spelt it out, but Wilson had a suspicion it had something to do with his growing up on military bases.

Before he could apologise, House went on with his evidence list.

"_Three._ You did _not_ try to fight back." He gestured to Wilson's knuckles. "Until you killed the bad nightstand yesterday, there was no bruising. Which means either you thought you deserved it or for part of it you were being held down."

Wilson clenched his fist before he could stop himself. A replay hovered at the peripheries of his mind. He blinked away the whiteness spreading outwards from the centre of his vision.

"_Four,"_ House went on, his voice sounding tinny and far away. "_Four,_" he repeated, then, sharply: "Wilson!"

Long, warm fingers worked their way under his and curled upwards. He clamped down and held on tightly, breathing through the replay he hadn't been able to stop after all.

"Four. The pelvic revealed that there was only minimal anal tearing, whiiiich could've been pre-existing or exacerbated—"

"Yeah," Wilson muttered, glad of the distraction inherent in House's tone, which was pretty much equivalent to a guileless whistling. He flashed the lying jackass a look that was meant to be disgruntled, but came off all dimples. "You're not getting any gentler."

"Me?" House snorted, tossing his hand back at him in mock annoyance. "Who's driving up there, sport? If you're the one riding the stick, when you get pulled over for reckless endangerment you can't blame the backseat passenger!"

Their eyes met.

"Bah-dah-bah!" Wilson made a one-handed drumming gesture on his knee and managed to hoick up one corner of his mouth as House snickered, obviously proud of himself.

The amusement faded all too swiftly and he went on.

"However, you _do_ remember something sexual happening—"

"I _told_ you, I don't! That damn SOEC kit wasn't my idea, remember? Chase was the one who summarily decided I'd been—who told me I should get it done!"

House looked at him with quiet eyes, which were far too sombre to be safe. "I also remember you telling me last night that I was going to think you'd cheated—"

_Ohhhoh. Damn. Stupid, stupid soporific—_

"—that means there was some kind of sexual act. I don't know whether or not it was consensual."

A tinny echo bounced the last word around and around in Wilson's skull, clattering it about like cans trailing after a wedding car. A reverberant, amplified, _unnecessary_ announcement. It was too much. Too astute. He was glad that House was on his side. He hoped he'd stay that way.

"What happened with the needle, Wilson?"

"The—what?" That brought him back with a new start. He immediately wished it hadn't.

"Chase has brains hidden under all that pretty hair," House said in a low, warning tone that dared him to try and pretend he knew nothing about this one. "He said that Walker had a syringe with them when they left. Either they came _with_ it, which means this was premeditated – or they got it from you."

A different kind of shiver ran through Wilson; House's voice had lost all inflection; it and his eyes were as icy and remote as the arctic. Evidently he'd give Wilson no quarter if he caught him acting as a kingpin for anyone other than him.

"Th-they came with it," Wilson croaked, taking up a stranglehold on the knee of his jeans and staring blindly at the tatty Asian rug under the coffee table, as though the intertwined greens and yellows and browns weaved in bamboo and somehow conjuring the illusion of sun dapples through a canopy, could keep him from seeing the sharp point of the needle wink at him, dripping with moisture from the shower, the syringe piston drawn back—

He shuddered and House's fingers hand closed over his, interlocking tightly, like tumblers in a keyhole.

"Premeditated, then," House stated calmly.

"I-I d-don't know." He honestly didn't. "I-I think s-so."

He wanted to howl then, for certain, but the tears wouldn't come. He'd taken in so much water yesterday and he wanted it all out, spat or puked or bawled onto the floor. Just gone. He wanted this all to be _gone._ His eyes burned dry, as though he were already empty. Still he felt as though he were drowning.

He looked around desperately, scouring the room for something else to focus on. The chair. The chair. The chair…was boring. The stuff on it, though… House's knapsack hooked over the back by one arm strap, a heap of his junk and a crumpled jacket on the floor. His laptop on the seat cushion, little row of standby lights glowing green. A heap of blue case files that weren't supposed to leave the hospital. A long cable stretching from the laptop, over the chair arm to run along the floor behind it and up onto the little study table, where Wilson's home computer and printer were set up. A stack of printed pages, freshly done, judging by the raw, warm smell of the paper lingering in the atmosphere. The corner pieces of a Housian jigsaw. He now had most of the outline too. How long would it take him to find and arrange the other pieces that made up the centre?

_How long before he figures out how much I deserved this?_

"You weren't supposed to go to the police, were you?"

House was so close to him again that Wilson caught a throat-singeing taste of cigarettes emanating from his shirt. He must have been smoking them out of the window for part of the night; the air freshener sprayed all over the mattress had hidden it.

"W-why w-would y-you s-say th-hat?"

He was stammering so hard it felt like he was sobbing, but without any of the relief that came with it.

"The way you talked about it, you made it sound as though it were a spur of the moment decision, a good old eye-for-an-eye impulse. Maybe it was, to start with, but something changed when the second one walked into the room.

"The force and consistency of the damage shown in your x-rays says all of this," House nodded at Wilson's cast, an expansive gesture that took in everything from his bruised face to his swollen knee, "was done by one person and any hard surfaces that got in the way. I figure Walker. He wasn't a burly chap, which explains the relatively minor bone and tissue trauma – comparable to what it might have been if you were jumped on by a four hundred pound rhino wielding a grudge. But it's precise, primarily torso blows; the kind that get dealt out in a boxing ring. You're supposed to go down and stay down, and then get up and walk away afterwards.

"That would also explain why you couldn't do anything about it too. You're no sissy, Wilson, but you're not trained. A few school yard scraps and two brothers doesn't make you capable of standing up to someone with martial arts training or pro-fighting somewhere in their hobby list."

He squeezed Wilson's hand before he let go and shuffled back against the couch arm, sat diagonally so that he could cross his right thigh over his left and, rubbing it absently. He caught Wilson's wary look sideways.

"You were supposed to claim you walked into a doorknob, weren't you? This was premeditated and it was in response to something that I'd lay five hundred on now had fuck all to do with your cases. You _begged_ Chase not to call it in to the cops. Bleeding all over the floor and out of your tree with pain and you kept telling him no. Those bastards bargained with you about something and you agreed." House paused: a heart thumping split-second of silence. "There's more to come, isn't there? Something else is going to happen."

Wilson stared at his oldest and dearest friend's haggard countenance, met those goddamn near-omnipotent blue eyes and, for a second, he _hated_ him.

"Well?" House prompted, the steely edge of a challenge jutting through all that judicial cleverness. "Am I cold, warm or smokin' hot?"

Wilson shifted his gaze to the stone cold coffee on the table in front of him. His face was burning. A muscle jumped in his jaw and, with a flash of equal hardness and determination, he snatched the Ambien off the table beside the cup and shoved himself to his feet. Without another word, he set off for the spare bedroom and the blessed oblivion of drug-induced darkness.

"Wilson," House barked after him. "The deal. _Answer me._"

Wilson threw a look back over his shoulder that was as chilly and uncompromising as House's tone.

"I don't know," he lied. "I can't remember."

_To all you fantastic folk out there reading this, drop me a line and I'll get Wilson to send you some of his macadamia nut pancakes ;)_


	6. Chapter 6

**Part Six: **

They blew down the NJ Turnpike in the outside lane. Fresh from a jam that had had them crawling nose-to-tail for three miles off the exit ramp from Princeton, they were now belting along in a heady blur. Exhaust fumes had turned the busy freeway into a mirage of liquid asphalt and rainbow paintwork. House kept pedal to the metal and tried to outrun the sensation that he himself was locked in park. Cooped up in CB's apartment while Wilson slept, his thoughts had set into a Gordian gridlock rivalling the commuter traffic on the adjacent highway. Shock, he supposed, could do that; even to him.

As improbable as running away from his own head was, running away from his _leg_ was impossible. The perpetual ache in his thigh that had dogged him since the infarction was intensified by a new dysesthetic burning so hot it felt cold, like liquid nitrogen swirling under his scarred skin. Whoever had termed this the Dante-esque pain had come the closest to pinpointing a metaphor for the excruciatingly ineffable agony that was this particular brand of neuropathic ouchery. It made for an incessant reminder of the day before – not that House was likely to forget it – and proved his _Limp_ford Christie impression from Diagnostics to the showers had been an act of stupidity. His whole system was hungover from the stress of it: from skull top to toe tips his muscles screeched over bone like nails over a chalkboard.

He was listing hard to the leeward side on his Vicodin dosage, trying to block it all out. One bullyboy cop like Tritter lurking at the side of the freeway with a grudge and a flashgun and he wouldn't get to New York by sundown. He'd get sent to the bench on another nonsensical DUI charge. _L_UI, living under the influence, would be more apt; but like hell was he giving up his pills, especially with _this_ case to solve. If Wilson didn't dare entrust his situation to the cops, House wasn't about to either. For the sake of that alone, he kept his speed to five over the mph limit and his eye on the rear-view for the first hint of a red and blue light show.

It would've been simpler to cash in his cripple credit and get Wilson to stay home than to hop himself up and play chauffeur. Simpler, though, House wasn't a man who cared for that. Nor was there anything simple about whatever had gone down in that locker room. Wilson kept insisting that there was, that it was nothing more than a straightforward beating by two thugs-in-training antagonised by his treatment regimes ending with pine boxes. If that were the case, though, House couldn't believe his friend would have just rolled over and taken it.

Even if he had made a professional error, Wilson had a highly developed – make that an _over_developed – sense of fair play. A lawsuit would hold him accountable and his malpractice insurance would offer the only reasonable kind of recompense. No. Either there was some personal reason for him to take an equally personal punishment or Wilson had been overpowered from the off. Whatever had been brought in that syringe Chase had spied could have seen to it. Wilson would hardly have been able to help struggling otherwise. Instinct was powerful that way.

The syringe itself was a big, sharp pointer to a conspiracy. Where a man could've got his hands on one in a hospital wasn't hard to imagine. Hunting someone down with it, though, argued for a degree of premeditation. Who, on a whim, went about executing revenge straight from the bedside of the dearly departed? Why choose this? What _was_ this? The beating, House was sure, wasn't the half of it. Chase had caught the tail end of the show and had found Wilson as he was just coming around: coughing, spitting, bleeding, and near hysterically trying to wash himself clean. Wilson kept baulking at the idea, but rape had to be on the cards.

That was enough, more than enough, for either one of them to wrap their heads around. Yet House couldn't shake the certainty that something else had been said or done to intimidate his friend. That wouldn't've been easy. He'd tried it himself ten times or thousand and always came away in equal parts awed and thrilled, knowing he'd met his match. Wilson hadn't outright denied that theory, when House had called him on it in the lounge; but nor was he admitting it. He wasn't admitting much. He hardly seemed able to accept that any of it had happened.

Frustrating, that was, and idiotic and a hundred other synonyms he could think of between asinine and unwise. House was not surprised by it, all the same. There were reams of psyche leaflets handed out to families and friends that painstakingly explained in words of one-syllable how hard it could be for an assault victim to talk about the ordeal. House had junked a small rainforest's worth, dished out by the SART, into the trashcans when he left the hospital last night. He didn't need a piece of paper to remind him that denial was at least as powerful as instinct.

Wilson's behaviour did not, however, count as predictable. Frankly, it was _peculiar_. They'd seen one another through enough rough spots for House to know Wilson generally acted like a walking, talking poster-boy parading under the slogan _How to Handle a Crisis._ But he was definitely of the sort that made House want to grab a red sharpie and insert _(not)_ in the appropriate place. Sure, Wilson had a bunch of yawn-worthy coping strategies that included crying on his therapist's couch and sitting through those damn tedious hug-and-heal groups; he never changed his life or moved on any more than House did. Even so, he usually went through the motions. This time, he wasn't_._

If Wilson had wanted all thehand-holding and happy pills and _it's not your fault_, _we love you unconditionally_ yabber that got recommended, he'd have voluntarily admitted himself to the short-stay rehabilitation unit in the third floor's loony-bin labyrinth – and never mind what House might think of it. He hadn't. House had contemplated, and discarded, his own narcissism and wishful thinking to arrive at the conclusion that Wilson had come home to him for a reason. It was the only explanation for why a man usually twitchy enough about his pride to shut House out of his life until he was back on his feet was still here, now.

Whatever he needed from House, then, it was the reverse of what the shrinks would recommend. Some part of Wilson was actively courting the recriminations and interrogation and being told he was a damn fool. It meant that somewhere amidst those was a chain of causes and consequences and culpability that fit into the misremembered half-hour. House had spent the last twenty-one hours since trying to work out what that chain might be. He'd tested a few theories over the hospital mainframe and the internet already, he was waiting on several sets of test results, and the sole reason he was putting himself through the torture of stick-shifting in this primitive auto was to run a first-hand search on whatever it was in New York to which Wilson was so keen to escape. At least travelling with the patient was guaranteed to give him further symptoms to add to his current list.

"You missed a couple of things out of your Manson family history," he announced abruptly, breaking the near silence in which they had been travelling. "I did some research on those assholes you went ten rounds with yesterday. Makes for some interesting bedside reading."

"Hmm?"

Groggy from the pain and pills alike, Wilson dredged his attention back from wherever it wasn't and met House's appraising glance across the car. In the last dregs of daylight, his face was ghostly under his bruises. He was slumped in the partially reclined passenger seat with the heaters on full-blast. He had a navy pea coat on over his McGill sweater, a plaid wool blanket over his legs and he was still shivering like someone's grandmother. If he'd hoped to sleep through the worst of the post-concussive symptoms, he'd underestimated how long it would take.

"Asshole number one," House began, wiping his forehead and shifting uncomfortably in the gusts of broiling air belting out of the dashboard vents. He was in a muck sweat and his clothes were sticking to him, but the chattering of Wilson's teeth whenever he turned down the heat bothered him more. "Nicholas Walker, Attorney. Graduated from Harvard with a 4.0 GPA, Magna cum Lade. Works for the prestigious Lowenstein Sandler. Known as 'Nick Never Fail,' which sounds like an advert for a laundry detergent. No ambulance chaser, though, and no criminal record—"

Wilson interrupted: "_This_ is what you were doing while I was sleeping?"

"Yup, and it was much more interesting than the movie by that name."

The bowel movements of an incontinent clinic patient were more interesting than that movie. But House would've watched both to avoid seeing Wilson mutter and moan in his sleep. Pain was a spiteful bitch getting to a man like that, when his guard was down. Profiling the assailants had made House feel less like he was being kicked in the nads with every whimper.

It had paid off too. They were not what he'd expected.

"Walker was married to your dead chick for seven years. College boyfriend while she was in high school; there's six years between them. She was a housewife, so that confirms the megalomania implied by the mobster nickname. He was president of the debate team in college. All round smart guy. Seems more the type to bury you in paperwork than beat you to a pulp—"

"Do we have to talk about this?"

Wilson fidgeted with House's aviators, which he'd purloined to combat his acute light sensitivity. The oversized lenses with their oil-on-asphalt tint concealed both his eyes and most of his expression. His whole posture had shifted, though; the pain-stiffened slouch had become braced and brittle.

"You don't care about your patients' families?" House put on an astonished expression and let go of the steering wheel to flail his hands in the air in mock hysteria. "Run, Chicken Little, the sky is falling!"

The car swerved into the adjacent lane and he grabbed the wheel swiftly; the Crysler behind hooted a protest.

"_I_ care_,_" Wilson objected, waving House's remark off in a vaguely exasperated fashion. He winced, lowering both hand and voice, as though even his own bruised tenor were magnified to intolerable decibels by his unrelenting headache. "The part I'm tripping over is where you do too."

Ouch. _Phineas Gage, the Return._ House hated sequels. The drug-induced dot dot dot that had stretched between them since their face-off in the front room had been a relief, in comparison.

"_My _don't-give-a-fuck o' meter still in the black," he retorted, with a half-shrug of studied disinterest. He knew what was said about protesting too much and the proverb makers could take a hike straight to hell for being right about it. It wasn't the Neanderthals he cared about in any case. "Didn't you hear? I've quit doctoring to become a super sleuth."

"Ah – _ahh!_" The resigned acknowledgement cracked at the end as Wilson tried to adjust position. He stalled mid-movement to cradle his ribs and gagged himself with his lip between his teeth. Shifting more carefully, he concluded: "Remind me to buy you a cigar and a pork pie hat at the next rest stop."

House eyed him, gauging Wilson's physical discomfort against the interval between his doses of Tylenol. If he didn't take more soon, House would pull over at the next stop and slip him some in a cup of coffee. They'd broken their journey twice already for him to be sick; most of the last lot of acetaminophen probably hadn't made it as far as his bloodstream. He was, however, going to have to live with the other kind of discomfort for now.

"The second attacker," House pressed on, wondering as he said it if the numerical order might not be misleading, "I assumed it was Jason Granville. Then I realised: when I saw him walking out to the police cruisers yesterday, he wasn't in cuffs. He wasn't wet either. _She_ was, though. The sister. Lindsey."

Wilson tensed. He reached for his seatbelt, but seemed to have forgotten how to use it and jerked blindly. The strap locked tight at the pressure and he made a small, stifled sound. He kept twisting it, compulsively resisting the restraint. _Yeah. That figured._ House reached over and guided Wilson's hand off the harmless strap. He kept hold of it until the hitching rapidity of his friend's breathing slowed up and thumbed gently at whitened knuckles.

"Okay," he muttered, as much to Wilson as to himself. "_That_ explains why you didn't fight back. Walker waled on you, but she held you down." He sighed, a huff midway between irritation and despair. "You realise that you're a chivalric twit?"

"Is this Pick On Wilson Week?" The attempted levity, and Wilson's fingers, shook. House let go of his twitching hand before it occurred to him he should've offered a better hold to keep Wilson grounded. "I-is there a p-purpose t-to this or are you j-just p-playing pin the near-death experience on th-the oncologist?"

"Trust me, _Lazarus_, where you see madness, I see method."

House rubbed his leg, which throbbed with renewed vigour when Wilson's voice trembled like that. He switched that hand to the steering wheel and dug in his other pocket for his Vicodin. If any part of this pain was converted from some chemical reaction in his brain that most people misattributed to the heart, he ignored it. It was hard enough to think past the shock; he couldn't afford to add in irrational empathy.

"Hey," Wilson said, in a steadier voice. "You okay?"

Trust him to notice. He couldn't just hunker down and suffer selfishly for once. Damn Messiah complex. House swallowed two pills and didn't answer. That share-and-care group therapy crap didn't work. Sadism and schadenfreude, the lot of it. His feeling bad wouldn't make Wilson feel better.

"The sister," he persisted, "Lindsey Granville. She trained as a nurse, post-marriage to…that boring guy—"

"Jason."

"Whatever. She's a CRNA, recently qualified—" Wilson's throat convulsed suddenly, as though he were about to be sick. There was a bucket in the footwell to protect the freshly detailed interior from just that, but when Wilson reached for his hand instead, squeezing it hard enough to make House forget his leg, he squeezed back. "I guess that explains what was in the needle: some kind of short-acting tranquilizer or anaesthetic."

Red crescents and little curls of skin rose up as Wilson's nails bit deeper into his hand. Taking that as confirmation, House moved on to mull over another of the innumerable oddities he'd found so far.

"Her previous occupation is unlisted. However, she lives two streets over from where you and Bonnie used to live in that cookie-cutter suburbia on the border with Trenton..."

He let that trail off promptingly, but Wilson gave a fractional headshake.

"I didn't know her. Not before she came to the hospital."

That could have ruled out any pre-existing personal motives. After all, there need not be any. Death had a way of changing its survivors' thinking. Neither the kid nor her mother had popped their clogs overnight; there would have been time to plan for it.

House wasn't writing anything off, though, not so soon. Evidence might well be all facts and figures, but _figures_ had multiple meanings: numbers, parts, happenings, the reactive bodies of the human beings within those happenings and, of course, the very conclusions that could be drawn from calculations involving all those things. A _figure_ was also the form of an Aristotelian syllogism and, useful as those were, they were rife with fallacies. He was not fool enough to fall for that.

"I looked the place up on Google Street View. It's an expensive neighbourhood. They've got two cars. Pedigree cats. She and her husband want children. She's unable to conceive naturally so they're undergoing IVF, which means there's high risk of twins—"

"Unless it became Through The Window View, you did not get _that_ from Google."

"I may have hacked her medical file too. Did you know Cuddy's password de jour is Tootsie Pop? I'm not sure if she's going with types of candy or obscene baby endearments yet."

"You Google-stalked my patients' relative _and_ you broke into her file!"

"And _you're_ not really surprised. The lack-of-baby daddy teaches kindergarten, so not making a packet of those green papers with dead presidents' faces on them. Parents are still alive, which means no inheritance fund to cash in. What kind of work pays this well but leaves no paper trail? Apart from drug-trafficking."

"You're ruling out your favourite theory?"

"No. It would fit with the ass-busting, lawyer-shaped relative. She could have a nice little immigrant gardener working on a cannabis plantation out back. Thirteen's checking it out. I told her she could keep any samples."

Wilson turned his head sharply and looked over the top of his shades. "Hoh! Back up there, Sparky. You've got your _team_ involved?"

This time, he really sounded outraged. House hummed and hawed – and filed it – wriggling his shoulders against the seat rest.

"Define 'team.'"

Wilson let go of his hand to make a wild, infuriated gesture that encompassed infinite possibilities. "This isn't a spelling bee! _Team._ Team_s_, since you've mentioned Chase _and_ Thirteen. The ghosts of graduate fellows past and present! Is Foreman picking their locks too?"

"Kutner."

Foreman, the half-assed homie, had refused.

"What are they looking for?" Wilson sounded thoughtful in spite of himself.

"Don't know yet." House tried for casual, hoping feigned innocence would cover the fact that he figured he'd know a clue when he saw one. "PCP addiction? Mad relatives in the loft? Corpses in the under-stairs closet? Until they call me, I won't know if they've found anything."

"Stop it. Call them off."

"What?" House blinked, back-footed. "No."

"_Call them off,_" Wilson insisted, shades pulled down. The medicated glaze did nothing to dispel the intensity in his dark eyes. "You're fishing. It's not worth the risk. There are high-tech security systems on those properties, maybe even CCTV. Trespassing is a gilt invitation to another lawsuit and if Walker and Granville get bailed early, you'll have two team members in the hospital. Call. Them. Off. Or I'm calling the police."

House stuck his hand in his pocket for his cell complacently, knowing Wilson's was still at the hospital. He froze in something akin to disbelief as he remembered he'd loaned him his that morning. Empty-handed, he called the bluff instead.

"Seriously? You'd sic the pigs on my dogs?"

Wilson dug the cell out of his coat one-handed and started to dial, his fingers quivering but quick. "I want them out of there. Either you call them off or _I_ call the cops and you can bail them both out for breaking and entering."

"Geez, you really know how to show people you care, don't you, Judas?"

The words came swift and thoughtless. The ugly head of history reared again, like a flat-eared horse on a misery-go-round. A muscle ticked in Wilson's cheek, but he didn't relinquish the phone.

"If the only way to get through to you is via a federal judge, so be it."

Well, that figured too. When the chips were down, Wilson trusted the baton-twirling 5-0s more than House. He hadn't really trusted him since he'd got played in Elmer Tritter's game of hunt the wascally dwug-addict. Maybe he was wrong about Wilson wanting his help.

"This isn't about my _pain_ problem—" he pointed out, but Wilson cut him off.

"No, this is _my_ problem. I don't need your boundary issues screwing things up any more than they are!"

"What about your issues?" House grunted, stung. "Was that a gilt invitation you mentioned or a _guilt_ invitation?" Because _there_ was another thing that didn't add up: "What exactly was it that you did wrong?"

Another batch of facial muscles twitched. Wilson set his jaw to cover it and held up the phone. The nine and the one were illuminated on the screen. House made a grab for it, but Wilson was too quick, holding it behind him and forcing House to surrender or lose control of the car.

"Last digit," he evaded flatly. "What's it going to be?"

_What do you know?_ House scrutinised every inch of his best friend for some miniscule movement or emotion that would give away the reason for his changed demeanour. _What_ don't _you want_ me _to know?_

He was silent too long. The button bleeped and the first peal rang out of the speaker. For a split-second he considered letting Wilson call, seeing if he would really risk a charge against him being added to the rap sheets being compiled. But getting a third of his own six-man team locked up – and probably himself too – wouldn't get to the bottom of this.

"Okay, okay!" House held up both hands. "Buzzkill. I'll call them off."

He caught the wheel again before the car could veer and made another grab for the phone. Wilson shot him a reproachful look and held it aloft.

"No, no, no. C'mon," he reproved, shutting off the call before it could connect. "I'm concussed, not an idiot. Dictate a message and I'll text it to them both."

Busted.

Reluctantly, House complied: "Get back in your kennels, the hunt is off. Be good dogs and check in with the alpha bitch on Monday for your new assignment."

"Dogs?" Wilson's thumb hovered over the buttons. "Really?"

"I may have referred to them as bloodhounds." House sighed as the phone pipped, indicating that the message had been sent. "Fine. Now you've banned a perfectly good sport, what else pays well enough to live in that neighbourhood without a listed occupation?"

"Alimony," Wilson muttered grudgingly. "Bonnie stayed in that house for years."

"Thanks for playing. She's not divorced. Could've been a compensation payout from an abusive ex. She's got a medical record twice the length of mine. Injuries all consistent with regular beatings: broken ribs, ruptured spleen, nasal and orbital fractures, torn rotator cuff, sprained ankles, repeated concussions, Colle's fractures on both wrists, six nightstick fractures and, interestingly, repeated fractures of the fifth distal metacarpal, both hands. She must've got tired of calling Nutjob Nick to the rescue and learned to fight back. Did she seem like the weep-creepy, recently empowered type?"

"No. Is that _all_ you found?"

For a man who'd been willing to get House's team banged up to keep his nose out of it a minute ago, Wilson sounded oddly disappointed. What on earth was going on? Not since his first divorce had House seen Wilson's moods swinging about as wildly as this. He'd been in pieces that time, nothing like the frustrated resignation of later on. This couldn't all be the concussion.

"So far," he admitted, wresting with and finally subsiding to the urge to gently grasp the back of Wilson's neck, mirroring one of his habitual gestures in a momentary offer of reassurance. "I've got both their medical files to go over in detail, but I'd only just run copies off when you got up to bitch me out for printing instead of packing."

"Uh _huh_. In the…" Wilson pushed the shades up onto his head to check his watch in the dimming light "_…seven hours_ I was sleeping, you stealthily hunted down information that you could have got by talking to people?"

House withdrew his hand with a scowl. "They're in police custody. Doesn't exactly suggest that they'd be fonts of truth."

"So, what are you thinking?" Wilson reached for an unopened bottle of Gatorade bought at the last rest stop and wedged into the centre console. He tugged at the flip-cap, hard enough to make the orange liquid slosh in its container, betraying the return of the pique that he'd been using as a mask for other emotions. "That if you just throw theories at me eventually one will stick?"

"It's a radical notion, but you could help. You were _there_, after all."

Wilson slammed the unopened bottle back into the console, turning on House with pure chaos in his eyes.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" he exclaimed. "I. Don't. Remember. I don't _know_ anything, House! _I have no idea what the fuck just happened to me!_"

His voice cracked on the last sentence. The shakes had finally ruptured his façade of composure, exposing him: raw and helpless and hurt so deep that House instinctively recoiled. There was nothing he could do, not a damn thing, because it had nothing to do with _what_ had happened and everything to do with _why_. Shying from the situation in turn, he snatched up the bottle and brought it to his mouth.

"Gimme that." He sunk his teeth into the end of the seal securing the cap and muttered around it: "You think you'll get through it that way? Why d'you panic about these things?"

He ripped off the seal and spat the spare bit of plastic into the footwell. He might've been talking about the bottle. He could hear Wilson gasping in horrible, heaving shudders, as he fought for some semblance of control over his body.

House held out the opened bottle, uselessly. "If you want _that_ kind of answer you need a therapist."

"I _have_ a therapist."

Wilson took the bottle, but his voice now sounded like it was coming through his teeth. Probably it was.

"I figured." House kept that bland enough; he didn't know why Wilson had thought he could keep this from him in any case. "You were taking Lithium to boost the tricyclic antidepressant Amitriptylinetwo years ago and again from May this year until two weeks ago to boost the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine. You don't get Lithium from a GP. You haven't seen one about your unipolar disorder for twenty-eight months. You're seeing Dr. Wood in Psych."

He meant it as a reassurance: to let Wilson knew he understood how bad things were. Wilson cringed as though it was another assault. He dropped the bottle into his lap and covered his face with his hand, wincing as though House were about to slap the file into one side of a set of scales, tear his heart out and stick that in the other.

"Damnit, House," he sputtered, grinding the heel of his hand into his eyes in a way that made House's stomach turn over, sick and cold and clenching with dread. "Stay _out _of my records!"

House spun his mind away from wetness seeping inexorably between Wilson's fingers, scrambling to add only the fact of the admission to his 3-D puzzle. He'd found no psych records to prove it; he'd looked for those months ago. But all that meant now was that the bitch Wood had filed them under an alias he couldn't crack. He'd have to try harder, get access to her cabinets and computer. There might be nothing in there that would help him piece yesterday together, but there should be something that would piece _Wilson_ back together. There had to be a treatment regime that would work for him, that would leash the black dog before its latest puppy tore him apart from the inside. There _had_ to be.

Wilson drew a harsh breath and pulled his hand away from his eyes, balling it in a fist on his knee. His face was dry, but stiffly set; his composure like ill-fitting armour borrowed from the Tin Man. It was enough to let House pretend his imagination had supplied the tears.

"Stay out of my patients' files too," Wilson added, recapping the bottle that had been dripping onto the blanket with an air of finality. "You're violating at least ten confidentiality laws and I'll be in violation of more, if I let you."

If _I let you?_ House's ears pricked at that. The inflection was subtle but, to his mind, unmistakable: _didn't know, didn't see, couldn't've stopped you._ Maybe he was wrong about being wrong. Maybe Wilson wasn't hiding things after all. Maybe there was something he wanted House to _find._

And maybe, just maybe, Wilson trusted him more than he thought.

***

It was knocking on for nine as they picked up the Lincoln Tunnel and headed into Manhattan. Between the gridlocked commuter traffic through Princeton and the enforced stops for liquid and fresh air, a two-hour journey had become three. It looked set to become four too, as they cut through and merged onto the FDR Drive. Between the river and the skyscrapers, the cramped city highway was melee of steaming engines and tempers. The last of the late commuters honked furiously, weaving and swerving their way, cutting up the disoriented, dawdling weekend travellers misreading maps and gawking at the scenery. Well aware that getting competitive in Wilson's unwieldy crate would end with it pulled over, dinged and smoking, while they waited another three hours for Triple A, House let the Volvo chug along in a queue and reflected instead on what he knew of the veritable strangers that he was about to gatecrash.

He'd met the twins only once before, though Wilson had known them for some twenty years and change. They'd been part of a group of close friends that had formed during med school, from his and Sam Carr's wider acquaintance circles. There'd some cliquey septuplet back then, sharing dorms, cars, and rented houses, working their way through college together. But, when the divorce divvied up friends and furniture alike, the twins were the only ones who had cheered Team Wilson. He clung to them with a tenacity surpassing yearly greetings cards and once-a-decade McGill reunions.

House found he was none too easy about that and he got progressively less easy the closer they got to East 77th Street. His brain insisted on chewing over the decade's worth of prior claim these strangers had on Wilson's fickle loyalties. He thought too of the times Wilson had ditched him for New York, of the unnamed "friends" who made weekly visits to Danny and of the job offer that had miraculously emerged from New York Mercy right after Amber's death. By the time House threw the obliviously lost satnav into the back seat and pulled up in front of the Glenwood luxury apartments complex, he'd forgotten about Wilson's trust in him and was mired in a dismal sense of inadequacy.

*

The Pavilion was nine blocks down from New York Mercy Hospital. Fake old wrought iron lanterns and snivelling fountains made a fussy, ostentatious spectacle all along the circular drive up to the towering white-brick skyscraper that overlooked Central Park on one side and on the other Roosevelt Island. Two officiously dressed doormen, one wrinkled, one burly, spread the glass doors with a flourish of their caps that was blatantly ripped off some old fifties movie. Snorting under his breath, House blocked the drive with the Volvo and popped the trunk. Leaving the keys in the ignition, he clambered out and made his way round to lug out Wilson's duffle bag.

It hit the tarmac with an abrupt thump, as he remembered too late Wilson's inability to travel without packing the kitchen sink. Struggling to organise both bag and cane, he shot a death glare toward the doormen, who were on the brink of abandoning their posts to assist, and elbowed the trunk lid closed. Planting his cane firmly in the gravel, he picked up the ten-tonne duffle with a disapproving rumble as the tendons and muscles in his arm caught the strain.

"It's three nights," he growled, as Wilson limped over to join him, looking nearly as stiff as House felt. "Why pack for a month?"

It was not, in his current frame of mind, an idle question.

"You're not living between military bases any more," Wilson answered, his laboured breathing and the hand he had pinioning his ribs undercutting the effort he made to sound reassuring. "You don't have to make your life fit into one bag every time you travel, you know. You can hire a moving van if you want. Speaking of…"

He looked around briefly before locating the knapsack House had deliberately left on the backseat, in case it turned out that he was only here to play chauffeur after all. Wilson popped the door open to heave it out.

"Give it," House beckoned, irritable with relief that he was not being dismissed on the doorstep and snatched the bag before Wilson could shoulder it. Stuffed full of stolen files, it weighed as much as the duffle and he felt old muscles, rarely used since his lacrosse days, stir and brace to counteract the sudden instability of the extra weight. "You're like a stuck record and the psychobabble was boring the first time. I get it. Leaving once doesn't mean leaving forever. Everything will still be there when I get back. Blah, blah, blah."

No matter how many times he travelled, welcome or unwelcome, he always felt as though he were a suitcase that were being trussed up and dragged off to be slung about in a hold and emptied out somewhere new. He was a psychiatrist's wet dream when it came to that particular childhood trauma. It made him no less disgruntled about it that every time Wilson reminded him that it was okay, that they were going home later, he felt those stupid imaginary cords loosen off a tiny bit.

They set off painfully toward the doors, House switching his cane to his other hand and scowling as the heft of both bags on his right side made his limp more pronounced. Needing to reclaim some ground, which against all odds felt badly tilted in Wilson's favour, he said without thinking and with a pointed glance over his friend's thrown-together attire:

"You look like you're about to rob a convenience store. Ten bucks says you get patted down at the door."

Wilson stopped short. A strange, suffocated expression crossed his face and he did another of those gaspy little gulps he'd been doing since he coughed half the hospital's water supply out of his lungs. He grimaced and his tongue flickered along his bottom lip, not licking but pushing, as if he were trying to spit out a hair. House filed the motion, but for the moment refused to contemplate what it might mean.

"New York security," Wilson rasped through the fingers that had come up involuntarily to cover his mouth, as though he didn't trust himself not to ralph all over the sweeping entrance steps. His gaze skittered between the guards and the car. "House, that's not funny."

Well, no, he supposed it wasn't. He couldn't see a metal detector through the glass doors, but most apartment blocks didn't have doormen, let alone for decoration. House sucked his teeth, swallowing a mixture of guilt and annoyance, though the latter was more at the situation than at Wilson. Their habitually rough humour was, it seemed, going to be as much a curse as a cure.

"They're as susceptible to bribes as any other," he said firmly, touching Wilson's back, which had gone as rigid as steel. "Relax. You've got plenty of cash."

He couldn't maintain the contact, not and make like a pack pony too, but he figured it served him right when Wilson stayed welded to his side until they passed unmolested through the entrance.

*

Wilson must have texted their revised arrival time ahead, because no sooner had the main doors closed behind them, than across the lobby the elevator doors binged open.

"About time!"

A small Japanese woman in her early forties padded across the plush plum carpet in bare feet. Dark, slanted eyes, dominant in her flattish Asian profile, widened to show slivers of white at the edges as she took in Wilson's battered appearance. Evidently, he hadn't given them a heads up about that. Instead of launching into a Cameron-esque volley of anxious enquiries, as well she might, she cocked her head to one side and set her hands on her hips. In a breezy New York accent, with a Canadian twist and just a hint of perplexity, she said:

"You know, Jim, if you're packing heat under there, a bill works just as well to get past the doormen. Or did you hold up Joyce Kilmer's liquor counter for that wine?"

"I can't do both?"

Wilson presented the bottle with a gesture that didn't match quite his quirky smile. If it registered to the woman that she was being as much kept at arm's length as gifted, it didn't show. She simply accepted the wine with a flourish that inadvertently showed off a decent rack framed by her yellow wraparound dress.

"Not well, by the looks of you."

She swept an appraising glance over him and Wilson shifted uncomfortably. His eyes, which had never quite met hers, flicked away to meander over nothing in particular. High brows drew together, but the woman didn't press. Smoothly, she shifted her attention to the label on the bottle and moved around him to dispatch the older doorman to move the Volvo.

"Jim. Good to see you." Her brother approached with a furrowed brow, but the same inexplicable diplomacy. He aborted a handshake gesture and gently grasped Wilson's good shoulder, swiping his beanie with the other hand and plonking it on over his own black bangs. He nodded at House from under the peak. "Greg."

House dredged his memory for irrelevant details like names and settled for a nod of his own. "Hello, twins-whose-names-I-don't-remember."

The hat-thief nodded, deadpan. "Got it first time; don't wear them out. I'm Kit, for short."

"Kit isn't Asian."

He shrugged. "Takito Hananda, then. Hananda-Cooper, if you want the entire mouthful, but Kit or Hananda is fine."

"I'm Megumi Cooper," C-cup added. She ambled up alongside Wilson and hooked her fingers lightly around his elbow. "Meg—whoa! Sorry."

Wilson had jumped at the touch. He shied away from her and backed into House, jerking nervously, as though he didn't realise who it was.

"Steady," House murmured, almost inaudibly and immediately felt Wilson's fingers snag on his shirtsleeve, clutching it as though the soft cotton offered some kind of support.

"Sorry. Sorry."

Wilson could have been talking to either one of them as he made himself let go, scrunching his hand into a fist at his side. He took a thick, sniffing breath and did yet another of those jerky swallows. His hand skimmed House's arm as if reassuring himself that he hadn't gone anywhere, then, manufacturing a thin semblance of equanimity, he said firmly:

"Sorry, Meg. I didn't mean to be rude." He made an inconclusive gesture toward his bruised face and the cast obscured behind his coat. "I'm uh…a little bruised."

His hand teetered in the air, as though he intended to grasp her shoulder or hand to assure _her_ that all was well, but thought the better of it and withdrew. A vague attempt at looking simply sheepish faltered when he couldn't maintain eye contact. He hunched his shoulders in a hunted manner, gaze slinking away to fixate on one of the narrow tracks of horizontal stripes that edged the purple carpet. The twins exchanged worried glances.

Cooper tried a serious, searching one on House too, which he didn't owe it to her to share. Giving up, she turned back to Wilson and said quietly:

"Okay. Blow tact. What's happened?"

Wilson fidgeted with a seam, both arms wrapped around himself, one inside the coat, one out. Apparently unaware of doing so, he sidled close enough to House that their shoulders touched. It was not quite enough to keep him from stammering again as he said huskily:

"D-do you, uh, mind if-if we don't…?"

"Of course not," Hananda interjected with the façade of neutrality that House hadn't cared for on the SART and cared even less for from a so-called friend. He liked it no better, though, when Cooper muttered, "Jesus," under her breath.

She ceded without another word and pushed the button for the elevator. Judging by the faint smell of wine that clung to her like cigarette smoke and the scars on her brother's knuckles as he politely took the backpack from House, personal conversations were not high on the twins' list of priorities. Fitting his freed hand over Wilson's thoracic curve, House figured they earned a few brownie points for that.

*

The doors opened into an elevator with half-mirrored walls and benches on either side. Hananda went in first, situating himself in the back right corner to make as much space as possible in the unexpectedly cramped car. Beside House, Wilson sucked in a short, uneven breath and stuttered in place on obviously uncertain feet. The thought crossed his face that he'd rather take the nearby stairs, before a shadow of near exasperation chased it away. Clearly annoyed that he was reluctant to do something so mundane, he huffed out the breath he'd taken and strode into the confined space with the momentary illusion of nonchalance. Corralled in, however, he shied immediately into the left corner, taking up residence as far from his friend as possible.

Only recognising now how much calmer Wilson had been when they were alone, House took a half step to the side, intent on manoeuvring it so that Cooper would join her twin whilst he stood between them and Wilson. But before he could do more than fail to follow, the doors started to close. That, he'd not calculated for. His move had put Cooper slightly ahead of him and the next split second was like taking his finger off a moved chess piece only to realise it was now straight in harm's way. It occurred too late that if he'd not tried to be discreet and simply barged in in his usual manner, he would have been in the right place at the right time. As it was, without any reason to suspect it would be a problem, Cooper put out both hands and blocked the doors.

Wilson took a sudden step back. His expression showed more surprise than alarm and, tired and hurting, it could have seemed nothing more than a stumble. If he hadn't been waiting for this, House would not have known to look closer, to catch the soundless part of his lips and the shape of an unvoiced exclamation. Hananda, rummaging for his keys, didn't look up and Cooper barely glanced at him. Reaching for the button that would hold the doors, she said briefly:

"You okay?"

_No._

He could have stopped it, perhaps, if he'd moved then and there, interrupted what had been triggered by that inadvertent cornering. Without really thinking about it, House shut the word of forewarning behind his teeth and withdrew into that numb, icy state where he could do whatever had to be done. Running on pure diagnostic autopilot, he stayed where he was as Wilson recoiled into a textbook flashback. The single second thought that entered his head was: _too bad I flunked this class twice over…_

Wilson's back had hit the handrail and it brought him forward again, swaying, an aborted rock that threw his weight onto his heels and jolted a grunt from his chest that he caught in his throat. Brows pulling together, a wary, uncertain look worked its way across his face. It was enough to draw Cooper's attention again.

"Hey," she said, raising one hand only to hesitate as Wilson brought both of his up swiftly in a palms-out, defensive gesture. "What is it?"

"Please excuse me."

The collected request was not what House had been expecting, nor the way Wilson suddenly raised his chin to look Cooper straight in the eye. Accustomed to every nuance of his friend's constant expressiveness House felt something twist, sharp and deep inside him, as Wilson's face changed, fading seamlessly from cautious into the steady composure he used on the wards and to deliver diagnoses. Worse than that, though, was his voice. The rusty croak that he'd been struggling to work through his raw throat all day became an improbable facsimile of his warmth-infused professional one: clear, compassionate and calmly complacent_._ He was looking at Cooper, yes, but he wasn't talking to her. He was talking to his patients' family.

"Sure, no problem."

Cooper stepped aside, propping the door with her foot. That small movement as she brought her hand off the jamb made Wilson flinch and snatch at the air, as though he expected his coat to be taken off him.

"Jim?" Cooper's eyes narrowed as she caught on. She reached out to steady him—

—_don't—_

—and Wilson shied violently. His head snapped sideways, flung to the left by a remembered blow. His skull hit the wall with a bang of bone on glass. House had a sudden vision of the shower pipes gleaming against the tiles.

_Concussion. Second impact. Fifty percent mortality rate…fuck!_

"Jim!"

Cooper reacted to the collision, head trauma her first thought and the cause of it secondary. She plunged back into the car.

Wilson staggered away from her. House caught a flash of courage as he tried to brace himself: feet squared, head down, arm up to guard his face – then Hananda caught his elbow. Wilson spooked, hard. The left hand bench hit him at calf-height, knocking him to his knees with a bone-jarring thump. Pain reeled across his face and his pupils blew wide, turning his dark eyes almost black. Realisation – and a heart-stopping resolve – jockeyed for command of his features. The realisation didn't belong to the here and now.

_He can't processes current contextual information. Traumatic memory coding is fault. The temporal and spatial features of the event_ _are lost— _

It was on the tip of House's tongue to bark a warning. But Wilson spoke first and House's mouth dried out, sticking his tongue to the roof and the words in his throat.

"Let go of me, please," Wilson said, his voice turning deathly gentle. He looked first Cooper, then Hananda in the eye, with an almost ludicrous languidness settling over his features. "Let go of me and walk away, before something happens that none of us can put aside."

Hananda dropped his arm, dark eyes horrified in some deep, unquantifiable way as he registered what his sister had.

"It's me, Jim. You're not where you think you are."

Cooper's words went unheard. Her voice produced a whole-body flinch that left Wilson shaking. He hissed, a painfully muted sound, then slumped and folded in on himself, jerking and twitching as though he were having a seizure. House's mind supplied the thick, fleshy sounds of impact: fists and feet.

_God._

"Jimmy. _Jimmy._ Steady on."

Hananda grabbed him again, getting his hand between the back of Wilson's head and the rail before he could smack himself a third time. Wilson lashed out – but, by some impossible feat of self-control, aborted the gesture in mid-air and threw his arm over his face instead. Scrambling thumps reverberated around the tiny chamber, as he struggled to get up while believing himself held down. House glimpsed tiny fragments of his face as he ducked and squirmed, eyes screwed shut, lips white with the effort of pressing them together. Air whistled through his clenched teeth with every remembered blow.

_Oy vey._ Something very close to guilt lolloped through House's stomach as he took in every detail of Wilson's fearsome composure. He had no recollection of when it was, but whenever it had been, that was the last time he would ever call Wilson a doormat.

He had no sense of how long it was before Wilson suddenly slumped and hung panting in the carefully restraining grip of his friends. Glancing at one another, the twins began to release him, but the momentary relief was torn away when he lifted guarded, haggard eyes. Dragging in a series of hitching, hiccupy breaths that plainly hurt as much as they helped, Wilson forced his chin up once more. His jaw worked painfully, a smattering of choked sounds making it out, before he coughed harshly, as if to clear blood from his throat.

_No. __No__._ Against his will, House felt his heart skip and his own blood run hot again, pounding in his ears as he realised what his friend had tried to do. _God, no. Wilson, you _idiot_. You stupid, smart, shouldn't've-done-it idiot. You tried to talk them out of it._

Of course he had. _Of course._ He wouldn't – he _couldn't_ – do anything else. _No antagonism, no bravado, not Wilson. He's too sensible, too sensitive for that. He kept his head, negotiated somehow. _

Something cracked in House's chest as his brain shot on at lightning speed, gathering more and more information as Wilson's eerie composure started to make sense to him. His fists balled and without noticing it he pulled his cane three inches off the floor with the urge to strike out.

_You bastards. You_ bastards. _You couldn't break him, so you made him party to it. You let him talk to you. You_ made _him talk. What did you make him_ _say? What did you make him_ do?

A strangled sound pulled House out of the blinding fury that had swirled apart his vision and crammed jagged rocks down his throat as he tried to swallow it – for now. Wilson had tried to lurch to his feet, but either slipped or recoiled and went down again, left knee first. The strained joint buckled under him, pitching him back. He fell awkwardly, landing on his haunches, legs twisted open at a painful angle and still bent underneath him as he threw his left arm behind him to catch himself. That elbow hit the wall and his right jerked in the confines of the duffle coat as he tried to bring it up over his face. The imagined _snap_ of a kicked bone sounded like a gunshot in House's head.

Wilson slumped forward as if he'd heard it too, his eyes going wide and shocky now as the pain from his injuries flared up and sent his sense memory into overdrive. Starting to tremble, a hollowness about his face that hadn't been there before, he dragged in a huge breath and, bracing himself, lifted his head again. A dazed sheen had come into his eyes. It cleared as he suddenly fixated on Cooper's empty, half-raised hand as she dithered between restraining him again and keeping her distance.

Her eyes moving to it too, she curled her fingers slowly closed on her palm and brought it down to her side, seemingly considering tucking it behind her back. Wilson twitched and visibly tried not to retreat. Summoning the same, ghastly calm as before, he said softly:

"Put that down."

"Put wha—?" Cooper began, but shut up when Wilson's eyes fluttered closed, striving fiercely to contain the panic that had flashed momentarily within them. _What was it about her voice?_ Slowly, so slowly, he reopened his eyes, with the terror converted into a hypnotic intensity.

"Put that down, please," he repeated. Despite the pronounced wheeze that had begun, erratically punctuating his sentences, his terrible politeness didn't falter. "You _know_ that shouldn't be administered that without oxygen, ventilation and paddles. Unless you…unless you are hoping…hoping it will kill me…" A strange, strained smile crossed his face, though no one had replied. "No. Well, thank you for that… In that case, put it down. I don't…know where…you got it or what you've been using it for – I'm not going to report you – but please…_please _don't use that on me."

"Jim, no one is using anything."

Still endeavouring to break the flashback, Hananda spoke next, knelt on the floor at Wilson's side, one hand on the wall in case he had to catch him again, the other flat and quiet on his thigh.

Wilson gave a small, non-specific shudder and looked at him.

"There are huge risks to it," he explained quietly, though the twins could have no idea what he was talking about. "Even a single, short-acting dose like that can cause respiratory depression, low blood pressure, dystonia, pri…" he faltered, a kind of dismay flinching across his face, before he finished faintly: "Priapism."

His choppy breathing was loud in the silence. For the first time since he'd started to speak, his eyes wandered away from them and his head drooped. He folded in on himself, clenching his thighs together as though he could somehow protect himself from what he'd just suspected was about to happen and the humiliating prospect of having blood forced to and trapped in the corpus cavernosa by whatever drug his attackers had planned to administer.

"Jim—" Cooper interrupted softly, a new kind of wariness stirring on her countenance as the condition hung in the air like a question mark. Her voice pulled Wilson's eyes back to hers and with a stoicism that made House ache in a way he'd forgotten he could, Wilson pushed his shoulders back. Slowly, deliberately, he sat up a little straighter.

"You can't count on that one," he went on, his calm starting to crumble until only a brittle neutrality was left. He tongued his lower lip, a miniscule tremble betraying his failing control. He cleared his throat, exhaled hard, and went on, his voice much softer now. "You don't need to drug me, I promise."

Another flickering, fearful pass of his tongue across his lips. He swallowed repeatedly, as if he were trying to work up enough saliva to finish. Then, resolve written into the tiny flare of his nostrils and quick press of his lips together before he spoke, he said almost soothingly:

"It's okay. I'm not going to struggle."

House was aware of a ringing in his ears, of the lobby running in dizzying streamers, and the searing heat of pure rage coursing unadulterated through his veins. He could watch no more. Half of what had kept him standing back thus far was the conviction that, should he step in, he could disrupt the replay and pull Wilson into the safety of the lobby. Knowing first hand the kind of detachment a good strong dose of sedation could infuse and able to imagine the convulsions Wilson might go through as his body remembered it, he dropped the bags and lurched forward.

"Out. Get out of there!" he snapped at the twins, his voice harsh with the fury he could no longer keep corralled in a remote corner of his brain.

Hananda backed off immediately, but Cooper hesitated, her eyes had locked with Wilson's and the mirror showed in them a similar spectral glaze. She, it seemed, was not quite seeing the now either. With no time to worry about the psychoses of a stranger, House stabbed at her with his cane. She started and recovered herself, grabbing his arm as she backed out into the lobby.

"Test him," she demanded, having been unable to keep Wilson still enough to check his eyes for the warning signs of SIS or a compendium of other brain bleeds from the second concussion in as many days. House shouldered her aside impatiently.

"The PTSS is running the differential. Out. I'll handle it."

Near trembling with more feeling than he could box into logical, comprehensible terms, he went down on his knees in the elevator car and slapped the nearest button that would close him and Wilson in there, alone.

*

The doors locked shut and, before the elevator could rise, House jerked out the emergency stop button. Trapping Wilson in a confined space probably wasn't the best idea right now, but it beat the hell out of security coming over to add to the chaos in the car. As an alarm began to protest in the lobby, House figured the twins would handle it. That, or they'd assume he was the crazy abusive culprit, in which case he only had about ten minutes before the doors got forced open.

Inside the mirrored chamber it was mercifully quiet: only a long red light panel had illuminated like a neon border around the top of walls and began silently to flash. Wilson had keeled in on himself between the back wall and the left bench. His breath came in great, heaving gulps that tailed into gasping coughs, as he hacked non-existent water out of his lungs. He was rocking with the force of them, hugging himself, pain etched in deep grooves around his mouth and brow. His skin was chalk-pale and his eyes flickered constantly, as though he were on the brink of passing out.

Settling himself awkwardly onto his knees, House ran a calculating eye over his friend before he made any move to check him over. He knew that whatever he was seeing it was not the full extent of what had gone on. Traumatic memories got stored in fragments, set off by stimuli and associations that could bear only a passing resemblance to the events themselves. Instead of giving him a good picture, this was more like watching a DVD that kept sticking and skipping ahead, changing scenes without finishing them. A traitorous part of him was glad of that. If he was right, if it was more than a vicious, cowardly beating, he knew he would get to see Wilson relive it over and over, in flashbacks, in nightmares, in his daily thoughts for the rest of his life. The less of it, now or later, the better. He did not trust himself not to charge off for Princeton, hell bent upon revenge and the law be damned.

Strangely comforted by the thought that he knew hundreds of ways to kill a man and a good few that were entirely undetectable, it was with gentle, careful hands that he put aside his cane and cupped Wilson's cheek, tightening his fingers only as much as he had to in order to keep Wilson from recoiling while he searched quickly for unequal pupils and loss of eye movement that would indicate rapid brain swelling. Wilson quaked under his touch, refusing to look at him, as if he had no idea who House was, let alone what he was doing.

What _was_ he doing? Either Wilson would lapse into unconsciousness and die, thus proving second impact syndrome, or he needed a full neurological work up to be sure he hadn't done himself any more damage. Releasing him, House winced at wispy, wounded sound it provoked and the frantic, convulsive move he made to wipe his mouth, as though having his head held like that had been another trigger in itself. Distantly, dispassionately, House allowed another possible scenario to form that had been hovering, nebulous, in the peripheries of his mind: one that would explain why there had been no signs of physical trauma to Wilson's anus, yet why he would keep coughing and vomiting. His shoulders sagged with despair, as he reluctantly acknowledged the other kind of penetration one man could force on another. _God, no,_ he thought bleakly. _Anything_ _but that._ Wilson had been spooky about it to start with. If someone had shoved that on him…there would be no way back. No way at all.

Halting, hesitant to touch him in case he set him off again, House brushed his fingers through Wilson's hair, feeling abstractedly for the oedema where his head had struck the wall. Wilson whimpered and ducked in a way that both warded House off and made Wilson appear to be listening intently. Dreading what might come out of his mouth if he started talking again, no matter how much he was going to need to hear it, House spoke before he could:

"Sh-sh-shh. It's me." He was surprised in a distant sort of fashion when what came out was a stricken croak. "It's okay, Wilson, it's okay."

If Wilson heard him, it was the voice and not the words. His whole body tautened, steeling for another round. His gaze, which had been fluttering distractedly over random parts of House's body, seized onto a streak of grime on the floor. He shook his head, so hard it must have hurt, and began to chatter, rapid and stuttering. The calm of before had fractured into something fearful, fragile.

"I won't…I won't. I swear. I'm sorry…Never again. Never. I promise. _I promise._"

"What?" House probed softly, hating himself. "What did you promise?"

Wilson turned glassy, hopeless eyes on him.

"Promise what?" he rasped, in a tone too clever to be that hollow and winced, as if from a parting pat.

_You. Utter. Bastards._

No wonder Wilson wouldn't – couldn't – talk to him. He'd sworn he wouldn't. What he'd sworn, why, and what it was that had put that guilt-ridden inflection into his voice got lost as House realised the havoc it had wreaked with Wilson's mind. His friend wasn't like him, doomed to recall everything in excruciating and near-photographic detail. Wilson remembered things by a more methodical, Simodean system. If he were trying, nay, _determined_ to forget, between that, the shock and the head trauma, it would be worse than piecing together the ruins of the ancient banqueting house, all in shards and bits, some semblance of shape discernable but almost entirely destroyed. House had a brief vision of himself, back on the floor of the shower room, holding not Wilson, but bits of organs and bone dust. He fought the despicable urge to push to his feet, dust down his hands and walk far, far away.

Before he could do more than think about it, Wilson buckled suddenly, blacking out. For a heart-stopping second, House thought it was the head injury and caught at him, but the rush of blood as Wilson fell forward brought him around immediately. At his touch, Wilson arched backwards with a stammered protest. He slammed into the corner again and the shock of it jolted an agonised cry out of him. It seemed, then, that the whole cycle was about to start over, that Wilson was completely beyond his reach, and a helpless sweat streamed down House's back. By chance, too-wide eyes caught his own and there was a flash of comprehension.

"Wilson. It's me." Deserting him forgotten now there was something he could do, House spoke swiftly, his voice as normal as he could make it. "You're having a flashback—"

"I know..." Wilson's voice was thin and thready, but aware. "I know, I know, I know."

He came out of it gradually, the vision receding. As it did, his injured body re-registered with a force that pulled apart his frightening composure and drove his breath out in a near sob. Quivering with the effort, Wilson dragged his legs from under him and managed to pull his knees up so that he was sat on the floor with his back against the mirror. He latched his arms around himself in a kind of desperate self-hug and let his head tip back until the red light flashing overhead cast its colour along his cheekbones. He closed his eyes as they began to glitter. His jaw flexed once, twice, before he gave in and whispered House's name, wretchedly.

Ashamed of himself, of his own cowardice and need to disengage, House scooted forward on his knees and slid one arm around Wilson between his back and the glass. Wilson crumpled against him, loose and detached and quite beyond even the effort of holding onto any nearby part of House. He hardly seemed capable of holding himself together. Minded to do it himself, though such a thing was hardly possible, House laid his other hand lightly on Wilson's diaphragm so that he could keep track his erratic breathing and the frantic flailing of his heart. Afraid that he would break down and cry, it occurred to House after a moment that he was more afraid Wilson would not. The relief when he didn't was sickening.

*

House lost track of how long they sat there, shoulder to sternum, his forehead against Wilson's temple, Wilson's silent shakes wracking them both. But, eventually, someone knocked lightly on the outside of the door.

"House, it's Hananda." The situation had instinctively switched him back into professional mode. His tone, House noted abstractedly, was quite different: crisp and clear, unlike his natural _sotto voce_. "We need you to open up now."

Faintly, through the muffling metal of the doors, House recognised the anxious whine of an ambulance siren. Sighing to himself, well aware that Wilson would probably take badly to being moved, especially to anywhere that involved more tests and more intrusions, however necessary, House gently grasped Wilson's wrist, where his hand had migrated up to dig at what must have been a spectacular headache. Wilson startled.

"Shh." House closed his eyes, struggling to find a tolerable key in which to deal with this; it had been a long, long time since he had put himself in this much proximity to anyone else's pain. There was, after all, no need to get cut to know how sharp a blade was. "It's still me. You're okay."

"I know," Wilson whispered, without looking up from his knees. He made a small, humourless, humiliated sound and added, "Stupid, really."

House ignored that. He couldn't think of anything to say other than the pat phrase _it's okay_ and _that_ was far stupider, as well as blatantly untrue.

"C'mon," he said instead. "We've got to go. Apparently we're sat in the middle of a major expressway and we're about to be mown down by a horde of career moms coming home to kids and sitters."

He counted it as a good sign that Wilson's gaze ticked his way, hidden as it was behind a forest of their fingers. There was no answer, though, and Wilson's gaze soon slipped away, rambling indecisively over the scratched steel half-walls between the floor and the mirrors.

"Wilson?" House gave the wrist he'd snared a little shake, drawing it down away from his face to get a better look at Wilson's disengaging profile. "Hey, you hear me, wherever you are? Hawaii? Mexico? Mars?"

Wilson shifted, barely. Instead of sitting up, he tucked his face down into House's clavicle to mutter: "I'm here."

House nodded, resting his chin on the dishevelled dark hair.

"Can you get up?"

What began as nothing more than a question was abruptly followed by a prayer, as his leg reminded him how long he'd had it crunched up underneath him. Electric shocks went off in his thigh, sharp, breath-stealing cramps that were going to have him thrashing in agony if they didn't move soon. The response seemed to take hours, as though Wilson really were beaming them down from Mars.

"Can you?"

House's lip twitched, relief nearly enough to make him chuckle. He sat back on his heels, grimacing, and pressed the button to open the doors. "Guess we'll find out."

_Reviews welcome – all you silent folk! :)_


	7. Chapter 7

******RECAP:** At Wilson's insistence, House drives him to New York. House spends the entire journey analysing who Wilson's attackers were and, still convinced he's lying about what happened, trying to provoke him into giving away more information. Wilson aborts Thirteen and Kutner's search of his assailants' home by threatening to call the police and House reveals he has broken into Wilson's medical files for the hundredth time. Once in New York, Wilson struggles to greet his old friends and has a panic attack in the elevators. He hits his head on the wall and is rushed back to hospital – this time New York Mercy.

******************

* * *

**

******************Part Seven:**

"I need the CT, a lead apron, a private room and, for the love of God, someone get me some _shoes_!" Cooper snapped the exam room door closed and swung around to prance in place, playing a demented game of hopscotch with cold feet and colder grey-green linoleum. "Can I add _stat!_ to that or is it too TV medical drama?"

Impounded in the requisite wheelchair by House's cane wedged through the armrests across his lap, Wilson squinted at her under the hand shielding his eyes. Beneath the glare of the fluorescent lights, the anorexic décor of the exam room was a kaleidoscope of unidentifiable zig-zags, colours and contours. The festering din of a late Friday night E.R. beyond the door swarmed and buzzed in his ears. He could hardly hear her, let alone follow the rapid shape-sequences of her lips. Fortunately, he didn't have to think of an answer.

"You can say what you like if you _hurry this up_!" House growled, heaving Wilson's chair into the gap between the sink and the examining table. He snatched back his cane and hop-stamped across the room to tower above Cooper. Any hope Wilson had harboured that, personally, they would be able to tolerate one another this weekend was crushed as they snarled overhead like leashed dogs scrapping over professional territory. "You're not role-playing in a seminar here—"

"And _I_ didn't go to med school in an episode of _Prescription Passion_ either!" Cooper interrupted, hackles raised at the incitement to break the protocol she'd already bent six ways out of seven and instantly distrustful of anyone who would. "This isn't Hogwarts; it's a hospital. I can't snap my fingers and shift everything into warp speed! You're not stuck out in the bullpen waiting for one of the docs on-call. Kit's gone to sign us in and get the admissions forms. We've cadged a room instead of a curtain. We'll get Wilson checked over and through to Radiology _as quick as we can._"

"Christmas is coming too – any bets on which will get here first?"

Wilson crushed his good hand against his throbbing head, screwing his eyes shut as their voices rose. The _bang_ of House's cane as it struck a nearby cabinet reverberated like the slam of the shower door being slung open. He flinched instinctively and his chest, already a solid ache on the right side from armpit to hip and sternum to spine, grew tight and stuffy, as though he were trying to breathe through too much steam in too small a room.

"Meg," he interrupted hoarsely, fog crowding at the edges of his vision and the remnants of angry words ringing in his ears. "Meg, I'm okay. I don't need to be admitted. It was a flashback; it's not dangerous. You could have checked me over at the apartment."

The shrill screams of a child with a clavicle fracture effortlessly traversed ten feet of corridor from the ward to penetrate plaster, stone and his skull. He winced and buried his face in the crook of his arm.

"Jim, all due respect, you fell on your head." Cooper paused to open the door and accept a hospital issue gown and pair of shoes from a Native American nurse. Balancing on alternate feet, she slipped the latter on: low-slung, air-vented rubber contraptions like sculpted black Swiss Cheese. "_Twice._ If you wanted to be around people who'd ignore a brain injury you'd've gone bowling this weekend not come to hang out with a pair of neurologists. You're nauseous, light and sound sensitive, you have retrograde amnesia and you were disorientated for nearly five minutes." She paused to scrutinise him seriously. "Are you still that confused that you need me to explain what those may mean?"

"No." Wilson started to sigh, but belling of his thoracic muscles made his fractured ribs grate and the breath caught in his throat with an agonised hiss.

"Cough," House ordered over his shoulder. "And breathe deeper, unless you want atelectasis."

He spun around to watch, hawk-like, until Wilson grimaced and did, forcing his lungs to fully inflate so that his alveoli wouldn't partially collapse. Apparently unsatisfied with his efforts, House gestured for him to unfasten his coat. He picked up a stethoscope lying on the desk and stalked over.

"Sit forward," he grunted, stuffing Wilson's half-shed coat down to concertina between the seat and backrest of the wheelchair and hoisting the backs of his sweater and t-shirt up. "Breathe through your mouth."

He auscultated symmetrically, leaving cold circles on Wilson's skin as he moved the chest piece from the apex to the basis of each lung field.

"Cough again."

Wilson coughed and swore. "Sadist."

"Fine adventitious breath sounds on the right," House retorted, once he'd repeated the exam.

He tossed the stethoscope onto the bench and tugged Wilson's clothes back into place. The movement jostled his injured shoulder and his whole arm filled with embers, simmering and sizzling. His eyes watered and House grasped his good shoulder gently, helping him sit back up.

"Polyphonic wheeze," House went on, abrupt and annoyed at Wilson's failure to follow simple treatment procedures. "Clears after coughing. You're only a couple of years off the at-risk group for pulmonary complications after rib trauma. Take deeper breaths and cough every thirty minutes."

He dug in his pocket for one of the bottles of painkillers, shook out two tablets and dropped them into Wilson's palm.

"Take those too, you're turning grey."

Cooper plopped the immodesty gown and a plastic I.D. bracelet onto the examining bench and got him a cup of water from the dispenser by the door. Wilson found a grateful smile at the momentary ceasefire when she passed it to House to hand over. While he sipped and swallowed the pills, she studied him critically, before motioning to the items on the bench.

"Get changed and I'll do your neuro exam over with whilst we're waiting for the CT. Judging by the state of the ward out there, it's going to take the full sixty minute maximum waiting time for an urgent slot—"

House scoffed and she turned on him with a smile to sweetly sharp to be safe.

"_You_ should wait _outside_. If Jim doesn't mind, you can fill in his admissions forms."

She turned a long, searching look on Wilson that he didn't fully understand. He made an indistinct gesture with his cup in affirmation and swallowed another mouthful of the cool, soothing water.

"Fine. We'll have access to his medical history in a few moments and Kit probably has knows all of the information we need…"

The pause was weighty, significant; Wilson peered at her, the eerie sensation of missing scenes making his head swim.

"But we need someone else's handwriting on the thing. We've already hijacked the admissions procedure, taken unauthorised overtime and mauled the Radiology schedule; I don't need to give Schaeffer another excuse to have me taking the minutes at every department meeting for the next three months."

"You get temporary demotions to secretary when you screw up?"

Struggling to dredge himself out of the melee of somatic stresses that were short-circuiting his brain, Wilson balanced the half-empty Dixie cup on the arm of his wheelchair and propped his elbow behind it, arm upraised as House picked up the I.D. tag. He thumped down into the hard orange plastic chair nearby and reached over to affix the bracelet around Wilson's wrist.

"What do you get?" Cooper asked lightly.

"A lifetime's supply of clinic patients. Meg," Wilson glanced edgily at the gown. "I don't want the exam."

She canted her head shrewdly, still keeping to the other side of the room. "You don't want the exam or you don't want me doing it?"

Wilson looked away. Guilt ran over him in giddying waves, left his skin tingling and crawling, caught between reaching out to grasp her hand to apologise and recoiling, his own held up in feeble barricade between them.

"Is it me?" she asked, without inflection. "We can wait for Kit, if you prefer. Or are you uncomfortable because we sometimes work together? I can make a call, get someone else in from our practice group. Theodore Jankowski's on tonight. You've never met him. Or Peta Schwartz will come in, as a favour to me. She's about to retire. You'll never have to work with her again."

"It's not—" It _was_, both her and the humiliation, but it wasn't her _fault _and she needed to help him as much as he needed her to not. Wilson broke off with a staggered inhale, almost a laugh, though there more despair in it than humour. "Coop, I—"

She shook her head quickly and strove to remain professional.

"Just give me a name. I don't need an explanation."

She did. He could see it: the shades of concern and restless need written into the crows' feet around her eyes and the reflexive way she flicked her thumb and forefinger nails together, itching to hold any instrument of which she could make use. He owed her an explanation too, for this, for more. He reached up to grasp the back of his neck, frustrated with himself.

Pain arced like a thrown javelin from his bad shoulder to his c-vertebrae and back. He bit his tongue and rubbed the strip helplessly.

"I can do it."

House unclenched his fingers from the silent stranglehold he'd had on his thigh and propelled himself to his feet to root through the exam room cupboards for an ophthalmoscope, cotton buds, tuning fork, hammer and soap bar.

"No." Wilson felt rather than saw House swivel and the startled, reproachful weight of his stare; he couldn't look at him either. "Kit."

* * *

Exiled, and neither one too happy about it, House and Cooper stepped outside when Hananda returned, but didn't move away. Through the frosted square glass window in the door and the stripe of light beneath it, Wilson kept tabs on them apprehensively. The sick headache banging away behind his eyes was starting to send spots reeling in his vision and the half-circles etched out by their shoe shadows didn't help; but he needed them in sight if not inside. Truth told, he needed House's strong hand on his shoulder and longed for Cooper's upbeat humour; both he might as well whistle for. It was too close, for them and for him; he couldn't fight his panic and mediate theirs. This was the reason, after all, why doctors didn't treat friends.

It was no reason, as far as House was concerned. Being shut out had made him tetchier than ever, as well as sore and stressed and seething about both. The abrupt slap-clap of papers as he flipped over the admissions notes startled Wilson as he began to manoeuvre stiffly from wheelchair to examining table. It sounded like bird wings, ravens, memories: the celluloid photos the SART had taken in yesterday's exam room while he stood on a plastic sheet, dazed and bare. The pen scraping on paper became nails on floor tiles, struggling, scrambling for a hold. Standing, unconsciously with one hand braced on the bench as he had before, he started to close his eyes. He blinked rapidly as the soothing blackness bleached white and ghostly showers began to form.

The sudden heated escalation of muttering voices outside the door didn't make it any easier to stave off another replay.

"Sixty minutes for a damn CT?" House was demanding, rough and impatient, picking up the fight as if he'd never left off. "You should've pulled rank."

"I did!"

"You should've pulled someone else's!"

"Can't do that here, House." Cooper raked both hands through her cropped curls, wrenching distractedly at them as though she meant to pull out handfuls. "This isn't PPTH. Protocol dictates—"

"Shove protocol!" House's cane clanged on a wastepaper bin.

"The hell I will!"

"The CT—"

"The CT doesn't cover all bases! There's a copy of _Grey's_ in my office if you want to look up everything that _won't show on the images_!"

She made another extravagant gesture, palm punctuating her point against the door with a series of woody booms. Wilson stiffened, expecting it to burst open.

"Do your damn exam after!"

"And get fired or sued?" Cooper laughed acerbically. "I can't afford to become uninsurable or get my medical license pulled"

"You won't become—" House broke off with a snarl for all entitled idiots: "One word from your father, one _word_ is enough to strong arm _any_ insurance company—"

"Not in this damn lawsuit!"

"Wilson won't file a lawsuit!"

"You might! At the end of a long and, retrospectively, _colourful_ career, I don't think my _foster_ father has enough clout left to come up against Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine, and Gregory House over their boy wonder oncologist—"

House flung his arms wide, swivelling on his heel to address the crowded waiting room nearby. His voice boomed over the crackle of the Tannoys, the shrilling of phones and drunks singing the national anthem.

"The Hippocratic oath is well and truly dead over here folks—"

"Stop making a scene!" Cooper snapped, snatching the clipboard from House with force enough that Wilson thought she would slap him with it.

Their furious voices resonated in his head. Their words became others'. The whispering din of the waiting room sounded like rushing water. He hardly noticed when Cooper's dropped, exasperation and empathy wrapped around each other in a choking, spitting tangle.

"I'd torch my credentials if it weren't for the fact – and _here's_ where the lawsuit would come from – that _it is not in the patient's best interests_! Get out of my speciality, House! This isn't a diagnostics case. You're not even a doctor here. You're _family._"

_You killed them. You killed my family!_

The harsh whisper shredded his thoughts into random words and letters, like the pieces of an anonymous letter detailing a crime. Wilson shrank from it, from movement nearby—

A severe voice disrupted the flashback before it overwhelmed him.

"_That's enough_." Hananda had opened the door. "Cooper, check where we are with Radiology and find out what state the O.R.s are in. If we need one, I don't want to be pulling a surgery in our office with hope and a hand-drill – do you? House, take a seat in the waiting room."

The door clicked shut conclusively.

* * *

"That wasn't kind," Wilson murmured, the grey shapes retreating and leaving him a little weak. He inched around until he could perch on the edge of the bench, peering at Hananda under his forelock. "Reminding her of your pre-med school training."

Hananda shrugged, meandering back across the room with his attention bent on a hard copy of Wilson's medical file. "I was the one who got to be our foster father's lab rat. She was always the control group in his experiments and physician-in-training. It's why she handles the surgeries these days and I do the people contact. I know what it's like to be the one waiting for treatment with a prima donna for a doctor."

He halted by the chair House had been sat in and reached for the curtains, which ran in two parts on a three-sided rail suspended overhead. "Are you able to get changed or shall I call a nurse in?"

Wilson fidgeted with the immodesty gown. It slipped in his numb, one-handed grip and unfolded. Its open back flapped in the draft from a fan whirling up near the ceiling above the door. The thin ties shivered.

"No," he said, although he knew he wouldn't be able to change by himself. "No, I—"

He stopped and drew a shallow, nasal breath, trying to steady himself as panic seethed under his skin again. It was counterproductive and his nostrils flared. The room smelt strange. It was medical, but unfamiliar. A different brand of disinfectant, synthetic rose instead of synthetic lavender soap, the greasy, catch in the throat, aftertaste of an antiseptic cream. The cramping in his belly didn't care for technicalities.

He gave himself a mental shake and gestured to the desk, seeking familiar ground.

"If that's your prescription pad, write House out one for Flexeril and Lidocaine. He's slightly less of an ass when he's in slightly less pain."

"I'll write it if you think he'll take it from me. But I'll need a copy of his file later to defend it to Schaeffer."

"Yeah. I'll make sure you get it."

"Quit doctoring, Jim," Hananda reproved affectionately, scrolling the nearest curtain across to partition the bench off from the desk and cabinets. "And sit down properly before you fall down. Are you sure you don't need that nurse?"

Wilson tried on a smile and lied: "I'm sure."

He eased himself further onto the bench and propped his back against the wall. He could feel the coolness of the plaster even through his coat; it soothed his bruises and made him shiver at the same time, imagining the cold contact he would have to endure through the exposed back of the gown.

His eyes strayed to the glove dispenser mounted on the right-hand wall beside the sink, feeling the rubbery trace of sheathed fingers on his skin, scattered touches that tested reflexes and pressure points, setting off little sense reactions that he couldn't control. He felt sick again at the thought of it.

That was if Kit wore gloves at all. Some doctors didn't, not for it all. Then it would be bare hands, faintly slicked with surgical soap, maybe a little damp. His attention skittered to the rivulets of water dribbling down the sink. A tap was silently dripping.

Taking a quick, desperate lungful of air, Wilson shunted the gown further away from him and scrubbed a hand over his face to wipe away the clammy sweat that had broken out.

He cleared his throat and called: "C-can you talk me through what you're going to do?"

"As we go? Yeah, of course."

Hananda had moved away to give him privacy to change. His voice came from across the room. Through a chink in the flimsy curtain, Wilson saw him set the files on nearby desk and switch on a lamp for extra light. In the sallow glow, Wilson contemplated a fine graze at the base of his left thumb that he hadn't noticed before.

"I meant now."

His friend didn't look around, but the set of his shoulders shifted from calm to poised. Paper shuffled as he rearranged the order of the clipboard sheets, positioning the admissions history alongside the medical file as though he meant to cross-reference them. He wasn't looking at them, though; his eyes fixed unseeing on the thin dark gap between the wall and the back of the desk.

"Do you not remember what the tests involve? You had this done yesterday."

"I remember."

"But you want me to tell you again? A sequence of tests that can take at least sixty minutes to conduct and nearly as long to explain in detail?"

"Yeah." Wilson squirmed at a flash of discomfort that could have been psychosomatic. "Kit, which one of us hit his head here?"

Hananda turned without looking at him. A thin notch had appeared between his eyebrows. He moved to sit lightly on the desk and curled his fingers around the edge, picking at the skin of his lower lip with his teeth.

"I couldn't help noticing," he said, voice low and level. "That you chose the one person to do this exam with whom you've never been sexually intimate."

Wilson's stomach lurched. He darted a glance at the door, but it was neither locked nor was there anyone outside it. As safe as he could expect to feel, he wondered if he'd made the mistake many people did and underestimated the more introverted of the twins or if that quiet acuity was among the reasons he'd asked for him to do this.

"Listen," Hananda continued, in the same measured voice. "There's nothing much in your medical file to prompt this question, but not all of the records would be automatically included. In addition to the assessments, CT and x-rays that were done, you had a full STD panel run yesterday and preventative medications prescribed for Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia and HIV. I'm not asking as your friend, but as your physician: do you need me to call someone from the rape crisis team?"

The bald words made Wilson gulp and bristle all at the same time. There was a brittleness to Hananda's posture now, the involuntary empathy of one victim anticipating the reaction of another and that was a thing Wilson would _not_ allow himself to become. It forced him to find words, before his silence could lead Hananda to surmise, to suspect as House did.

"Don't…don't call," he got out as the desk creaked, Hananda's weight shifting from it to his feet as he reached for the phone on the wall. "I-it was just precaution. Because of the amnesia."

"You don't know?"

That was too careful, too calculating for Wilson's liking. He cleared his throat and chest, with a hard abrasive cough and used the sudden spasm of pain to force himself to go on as he had been.

"No. Do your exam, Kit. I don't…I'm not comfortable taking my clothes off in front of a nurse right now, but I may need your help. Work with them as much as you can. When you can't, I'll handle it."

Hananda made a move toward the curtain. His hand hovered in mid-air, not yet drawing it back.

"Are you su—?"

"_I'll handle it,_" Wilson repeated.

He got the end of the curtain and tugged until it rolled back and he could look his friend in the eye, dogged and determined. Hananda sighed and shook his head and all of a sudden Wilson wanted to laugh, the incessant gentleness grating at him when there was not a doctor in the place who could do what he needed and keep their hands to themselves. His voice was all edges and bitterness as he explained:

"I'm due for an annual physical in three months. Given the circumstance, I don't think they'll let me off this one. And I have to speak to a psychiatrist before I can go back to work. I can't afford _not_ to be able to handle this. A breakdown isn't something that you can have if you work in a hospital. Not at my level."

Hananda let his hand fall from the other curtain and rubbed his thumb across his scarred knuckles consideringly.

"I don't know," he mused, "There's quite a spectrum of allowable human frailty, if you can compartmentalise and not let the personal affect the professional."

It was Wilson's turn to shake his head, slow and resentful.

"Bulimia. Alcoholism. Drug addiction," he rattled off, a thin cynical smile twisting at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah. If your foster carer is Josiah Cooper, colleague of John Williams and the late Ezra Powell: the revolutionary research experts of the last fifty years. Or if you're Gregory House, internationally renowned diagnostician and one-of-a-kind. I'm good, Kit, but when the stats are in, I'm just another oncologist. You and Coop, you don't even need Jed. You've got the best surgery record on the West Coast. House is walking lawsuit, but he's Jack Bauer with a stethoscope. I'm the only one of us who needs his job more than it needs me." He climbed to his feet to unfasten his jacket and shucked it off, then sat again, stubbornly. "Do your exam."

Hananda studied him with sober eyes.

"Okay," he said at last. "You more coherent now than you were, so we'll start by going through the SAC once more."

He picked up the top sheet of paper on the desk pile and got a pen out of the plastic cup beside the computer monitor, but paused before he wrote anything and pointed the end of the biro at Wilson sternly.

"One rule before we get going – and this is a deal breaker – if, _at any time_, you want me to stop, you say it. I'll stop."

Wilson let out a breath he hadn't even known he was holding.

"Okay."

* * *

"Get off me and get out!"

Frogmarched up from the enclosed waiting area, House shook off the tall nurse and burly security guard who had had kept him corralled since TweedleBitch ordered him off Wilson's case. Banned from overseeing any of the procedures, he'd paced around blocks of poorly stuffed chairs between thin walls and wired glass windows. Trapped, jetsam-like, on a tide of imagined neurological and pulmonary complications, apprehension had swelled inside him. It crested into full-blown alarm as he took in the festival of lights and tunes strung around Wilson's bed. Damnit! He'd known there could be no good reason that a CT would take four hours. What had happened?

He loped rapidly into the private room and crossed to the steel-framed bed, scanning the multiparameter LCD monitor. Wilson's vitals were strong and steady: heart rate on the low side of normal, but well within range; blood pressure too; temperature eurothermic; and respiration steady. He was stable. Agitation hardly subsiding, House reached for the chart to find out which of his possible diagnoses was responsible for all the whistles and bells.

"Please don't touch that. _Mister_ _House—!_"

The nurse intercepted his grab like some kind of battleaxe Barbie. In no mood to dance when he didn't yet know where Wilson was on the scale between horrible headache and drooling disabled, House sidestepped impatiently.

"I said: _get out_." He ground to a halt when she pursued, leaned in close and in a voice fit to powder rocks warned: "Nurse Ratched, if you don't get out now I will choke you unconscious and drop you into the nearest cuckoo nest."

The woman blenched, but held her ground. Her stubbornness irked House more than the stammers and swear-on-my-life-sirs of the underlings she'd sent before her to promise Wilson hadn't been rushed into surgery. With a snarl of frustration, he raised his cane like a battering ram.

He misstepped abruptly as the aid veered to the left an inch away from her ribs. The stumble drove a lance of pain down through his thigh to his foot and another pierced upward from heel to hip. It jolted his chin down for him, made him look in the direction the cane had swung, made him realise…that fingers were hooked around the rubber tip. That the tethers of IV wires were tangling about the shaft. That brown eyes, glazed and shadowed in a wan face, were blinking owlishly at him.

"Try not to get yourself kicked out," Wilson reproached.

He was conscious. In none of his scenarios had House pictured that. Disorientated by the notion of looking down into a bed with Wilson in it, rather than across one at his white-coated colleague or up at his friend laid out on the pillows himself, House had missed the most obvious symptom. The relief that roiled through him was seconded only by misdirected exasperation.

"Your damn friends have that covered already," he groused, voicing only half of the critical commentary his traitorous brain had decided to run.

He was simultaneously certain that he would never have made such a rookie mistake if Tweedles Dumb and Bitch weren't bent on playing puppet master and convinced that if he was this blind and bothered, they had been right to exile him as incompetent family. Affronted by the thought of that and half-wrecked with the relief besides, he relinquished his hold on the cane and let it drop onto the bed.

"That's twice in two days you've been ejected – at two separate hospitals," Wilson pointed out, around a jaw-cracking yawn. He fumbled one-handed with the wires looped around the cane handle, trying to disentangle them. "It couldn't possibly be you."

The sourpuss nurse still breathing down House's neck _humphed_ as though she thought it very well could. House snorted his dissent and capsized heavily onto the bed. On the incline toward forty-eight sleepless hours, a hefty chunk of which he'd spent pacing ferociously, his leg was threatening that if he didn't get off it right now it would drop him on his ass. An involuntary grimace contorted his features and he barely heard Wilson apologise to the nurse. Rubbing impatiently at overtaxed muscles and the gnarled concavity of protesting scar tissue with one hand, he snatched Wilson's chart as soon as the nurse excused herself and began to leaf through it.

"What happened?" he demanded, skimming the drying ink with practiced eyes. "Why're you hosting Mardis Gras six months early?"

"It's not as bad as it looks."

Wilson stifled another yawn and inched himself up a little higher on the mound of pillows elevating his back and head at an angle of 25 degrees. With awkward fingers, hampered by the cast, he used his right hand to pluck the faded blue woollen blanket a little higher up his torso, settling the ribboned hem just below the red logo on his grey McGill sweater. The cheesecloth sling was gone and his arm had been threaded through the sleeve, the sweater stretched tight over the bulky plaster cast. A replacement sling in black neoprene was hooked over the handle on the bedside cabinet drawer. House followed the distracted drift of Wilson's gaze over the items while he waited for further details. But the meandering study came full circle and Wilson's weary eyes fluttered closed.

"Hey! _What happened?_"

The bed jumped and squeaked as House thumped the mattress. His voice came hard and urgent, forcing its way through Wilson's cloudy consciousness. His friend startled, then covered House's clenched fist with his left hand, gripping tightly enough to get his attention. A chastening cant of his head directed House's attention over his shoulder. Between the jamb and the frame of the sliding door, the mountainous guard loomed expectantly. The nurse, who had backed off as far as the station right outside the window, looked up too, sharp-eyed and suspicious. For reasons that House was sure had nothing to do with his having cracked a window with an enraged swing of his cane, he was being watched.

He sucked in a long breath and got a hold of himself.

"What happened?" he repeated, quieter, but undeterred.

Wilson eyed him for a moment, blinking in a dazed sort of fashion, before he shifted his grip from House's hand to his wrist and tugged gently.

"C'mere," he said huskily.

House leaned forward, half-glancing at the chart for a notation that would tell him when a breathing tube had been put in to make Wilson's throat as raspy as that.

"C'mere," Wilson repeated, softer still.

House bent over him, almost cheek to cheek, worried both by the glaze in his eyes and the raw whisper. It was a ruse. Wilson turned his head and brushed their lips together, dry and chaste and calming.

"It's okay," he whispered, releasing House's arm to comb gentle fingers briefly through the tangled, silvering curls at the back of his neck and knead at the tense muscles beneath. "It's okay, Greg."

Was it? The stiff plastic of the nasal canula dispensing oxygen and the chemical tang of chlorhexidine mouthwash were less than comforting: depressed respiration from the rib trauma and the painkillers too – obviously given too late, if he'd thrown up again. Shaken, and even more at having been so transparent about it, House sat up and backpedalled to the safety of the file, searching for better proof than a few well-meant words. Wilson stretched out and flattened his palm over it, obscuring any evidence one way or the other.

"_I'm_ okay," he insisted.

House studied the hillock of puffy skin where the catheter was inserted into the dorsal arch vein. "How d'you figure?"

"If I wasn't I'd be in the O.R. by now. That or some fancy head gear."

Wilson made a loose gesture somewhat indicative of an intercranial pressure monitor probe or a porcupine. He lowered his hand to rest it on House's knee, thumbing the seam of his jeans serenely. House narrowed his eyes, realising.

"You're not okay. You're—"

"Sedated, yeah. Pretty sleepy." An idle smile stirred Wilson's lips. "S'nice."

House bit the inside of his cheek, unable to envision a scenario in which Wilson would have willingly allowed that, but the gentle drum of fingers on his good leg made him glance up from the scribbled_ Ativan_ on the chart.

"I trust them, House. Enough for this." He let go long enough to gesture at the equipment fencing him in. "There was no emergency. It's all precautionary. Apparently my medical file reads like someone was playing Sudoko with letters of the alphabet." He yawned again, eyes drifting closed. "Dunno what you did, but you should fix that."

House swallowed dryly, his heart doing a double-thump-skip routine as it dawned on him that _nothing_ had happened. The three residents he'd scared off in the waiting room hadn't told him anything much about Wilson's condition because there wasn't much _to_ tell. The tests recorded on the chart were mainly repeats of the ones that had been run yesterday at Princeton Plainsboro. He'd been envisioning SIS, haemorrhaging, burr holes, shunts, Wilson's head shaven for a craniotomy—

A burst of activity flared across the cardiac monitor. House flung an agitated look at it, but it was only sinus tach, a hypnagogic jerk as Wilson resisted the soporific. He drew a steadying breath and reached out to grip Wilson's wrist, fingers settling over his pulse point. There was no diagnostic need for it; the machines were measuring for him. But the stuttering beat kept at bay the memory of times before he'd had a medical license, of sitting hypnotised but helpless in the military hospitals. Of men going ten rounds with the sandman in case it was their last battle. Of others twitching and resisting blacking out during field repairs, anaesthetised with alcohol and stoicism. Of the last throes of the dying—

_Oh lay off, Hamlet._ House threw the useless chart onto the Ottoman, infuriated with himself. Wilson had come nowhere close to dying. It was pointless act of self-torture to imagine he had. The thought hadn't crossed his mind before, though: that anything could _happen_ to Wilson. Occasional bouts of desk-jockeying aside, the man was as healthy as a horse. House had joked the odd time that Wilson would one day care so much his heart would crack up under the strain. He'd never seriously thought that, in any reality, Wilson might be the first to go. Or what _he'd_ do if…

Wilson roused again. He took a deeper breath, winced and freed his hand to make a nondescript gesture toward the bedside.

"House. Cabinet."

"Cardiac monitor. Curtains." House shook himself, scattering the memories to the four corners of his mental world. "Sorry, I thought we were playing _I Spy_."

Wilson's eyes flickered tiredly toward the ceiling.

"_On_ the cabinet," he mumbled.

House's attention darted over the jug of ice water, the phone, notepad and pen, before settling on two bottles and syringes tucked in the pouch of a gift shop replica of A.A Milne's Kanga. He leaned forward to pick up the plushie, hissing as his bad leg took his weight for a moment. Extracting the bottles, he perched the Kanga on his knee distractedly and studied the labels.

"Lidocaine and Kenalog? What're these for?"

"You."

That brought House's head up, a protest rising in his throat. His leg was fine, damnit! It was one thing for Wilson hassle and hand-hold him over his disability, another to rope in the nearest passing physicians to needle him literally and figuratively about it.

"Best I could do…this time of night." Wilson was blearily apologetic. "Can't prescribe for you…while I'm a patient. An' it's NYMH's policy not t'…notta prescribe opiates to…first time…patients." He blinked hard, his eyes slipping in and out of focus. He was fading fast. "You can…inject yourself…say Kit did…f'anyone asks. Shouldn't. They promised…no questions." House relaxed a little at that; the creaking shift of his weight on the bed betrayed him to Wilson and raised another of those fragile smiles. "Trust me…"

He tailed off, licking his lips as if he meant to go on, but didn't. His breathing levelled and slowed; sleep sucking inexorably at him. House wasn't sure if the final remark had been a qualifier as to why the twins were breaking more rules or an incomplete plea for him not to be an ass about it. He thumbed the bottles, rolling them over in his palm with a soft, glassy clink while he considered it.

"H'se. Please." With a valiant effort, Wilson prised his eyes open again. Lids immediately closing, head nodding, he focused only for the briefest of seconds, long enough for House to register the silent appeal. "_Need you_, H'se. I need you…to…"

That too petered out into silence. Wilson sighed unconsciously and sunk into a drug-induced oblivion. House watched the little zigzags on the cardiac monitor lull into an languorous rhythm and tried to guess what the rest of the sentence might have been. Need you to play nice? Need you to trust me? Need you to…not be in pain? To be able to concentrate? That, House had to admit, he needed too. Not least because he needed to find out what the hell was taking so long with the CT results.

Steeling himself, he grabbed his cane and heaved himself to his feet, pocketing the bottles. He cast a last, appraising look over the peaceful monitors. Satisfied that all was as well as it could be here, touched his fingertips to Wilson's bruised jaw. Almost imperceptibly, Wilson relaxed under his touch. House jerked his hand back, wrestling with the sudden sensation that his heart was too big for his chest. He blew it out with a hard, bracing breath and turned to go. As an afterthought, he stepped back and tucked the fuzzy Kanga into the crook of Wilson's arm.


	8. Chapter 8

**RECAP:** _In Part Seven House and Cooper argued over Wilson's care, before Wilson requested Hananda treat him. Cooper had House locked in the waiting room until the neurological tests were finished. Once he got out, House visited Wilson…_

**Part Eight**:

Skating the door to Wilson's room closed, House stepped out into the quiet corridor. The Neurology ICU was cyanotic and still. Only the nurses' station was lit up, bright as an isotope-illuminated aneurysm on a CT scan. He glanced quickly at the colour-coded signboard on the wall and set off for the elevators, the grating ache in his leg dulled by a new burst of adrenaline, fired from his imagination. The damn thing would be shooting off speculations until he held Wilson's test results in his hands.

Head trauma was a notoriously tricky and unpredictable diagnosis. Wilson was probably right, in the absence of an immediate craniotomy or ICP monitor, he was unlikely to be high on the critical list. But there were a multitude of complications that could first be closely monitored before resorting to emergency procedures, from opening to drilling into his skull.

His lucidity, such as it was, was encouraging. The drowsiness had been rendered diagnostically useless by the sedative. That, House didn't like one bit. Sedatives were, as a rule of thumb, contraindicated for head injuries, although, a patient – particularly one in the under five bracket – could apply thumb_screws_ by squalling or thrashing too much for the CT to take its pretty pictures. An adult kicking off like that was either a symptom of trauma-related behavioural changes or a condition known simply as _total bastard._ Wilson was only ever part bastard.

Two blows to the head in twenty-four hours was, to put it mildly, contraindicated too. The time that had elapsed since the second collision now made second impact syndrome implausible, which was just as well since the treatment for that was almost universally a wooden box. But there was a WalMart's worth of other worrisome options to choose from. An epidural haematoma, for example. Despite the absence of a skull fracture, there was still a twenty-five percent chance of a ruptured meningeal artery from the initial injury, causing blood to dissect the dura matter and the mass to slowly expand. It fit Wilson's ongoing symptoms of vomiting and patchy somnolence, although the absence of fixed pupils and his coherence on the journey argued against it. On the other hand, the second blow could easily have caused it in a brain already bruised from the original percussion. He'd been far too sleepy for House to get a decent read off his pupils a few moments ago.

An epidural haematoma usually required a burr hole intervention, _stat_. But it was one of the better diagnoses, with a decent recovery rate. He was too coherent for a subdural haematoma, fortunately, for prognosis was almost categorically dismal due to underlying brain injury. Intercerebral haemorrhage remained on the probable list, though; delayed onset was common and it could have been aggravated by a second concussive injury. Localised neurological deficits would have been picked up by an exam – which he hadn't seen – and increasing lassitude was again hard to determine in the presence of the sedative. The next stop along the line was seizures; House didn't fancy hanging around to wait for those. Again, treatment was surgical evacuation and, if done swiftly, the prognosis was reasonable.

Cerebral contusion, that was possible too, particularly over the bony prominences of the sphenoid ridge and nasal plates, affecting the anterior temporal lobes and subfrontal cortex. Yesterday, miniature haematomas could've been too mild to be picked up by the CT; today, they might be more apparent. Wilson's short-term memory wasn't shot, which was a good sign for his lobes, but one-sided weakness indicative of a motor cortex injury would be harder to pick up with most of his right broken and, or, in plaster.

Deep in his darkening thoughts, it took House a moment to realise he was being hailed.

"_Mister House!_"

It wasn't one of the twins, using _mister_ like that, thus it was no one he had time to waste on. He turned impatiently as elephantine footfalls thundered up behind him.

"Doctor. It's _Doctor_ House."

The correction was automatic; the Latino guard's dark eyes were unimpressed. Momentarily it had slipped House's mind that hospital security was keeping watch on him from the shadows. That window he'd broken must've been a prize, gilt-edged glass or pure crystal or something.

The guard stopped at the door to Wilson's room and poked his head in to check on the patient, as if for some reason he believed House would be standing around passing the time of night when he should've been calling a code. With a grunt of apparent satisfaction, the guard shut the door, turned, and thudded up close to him, looming over House with one foot a lot too close to his cane.

"You leaving for the night, _Doctor_ House?"

"No."

He swept a judgemental glance up and down the man, because he couldn't stop himself, and felt more than saw the guard shift his weight, expecting trouble. He _had_ trouble, but only because he was clearly slower than a glacier shift. _Of course_ House wasn't leaving for the night. Not without Wilson's test results – and not after either. Not with his partner doped into docility and unable to consent – or, more importantly, _refuse_ – anything from a glass of water to invasive brain surgery. Even so, House didn't need an escort upstairs; intimidating other doctors worked so much better when his hands weren't cuffed behind his back.

"Going to the bathroom," he lied, waggling his cane for emphasis. "You can come with if you like. I could use an extra hand."

The guard's nostrils flared large in disapprobation. He stood back and waved House on. He was safely inside the elevator when realisation broke belatedly over the guard's heavy features: there was a bathroom inside the private room.

"Oy—!"

With impeccable timing, the elevator doors clanked closed.

* * *

Disembarking on the next floor up, House came quickly to the conclusion that NYMH didn't just require elevators to get around but moving walkways. Older than PPTH's compact, custom-built facilities, its specialised rooms and hallways were a rambling, utilitarian labyrinth. Either the lateness of the hour or the vociferous protests from his leg were making technicolour swirls dance in front of his tired eyes and he grew half-convinced he was limping through the ghosts of other poor sods who had snuffed it while circumnavigating the maze. He trekked stubbornly on, scanning name plaques in search of Wonderland's disappearing double-act.

The heads of department's door, when he found it, was like all the others: white painted with a poky little square window of rippled glass. The only distinction was that here the door was set awkwardly beneath a superficial vertical crack left over from where an internal dividing wall had been taken out. On either side, the corridor-facing walls were bleak: a low-budget finish of half-wood and half-glass. Between the gaping vertical slats in the blinds that barred these windows glimmered stripes of low light, indicating a late night being worked by those who wouldn't appreciate being disturbed. Tough. House didn't care to be kept hanging, either. He opened the door without knocking.

The influx of yellow light from the corridor fanned into a modernised double office, with matching brushed chrome bookshelves and glass desks on either side. The one on the left was regimentally tidy. The twins were stood behind the one on the right. Medical files were spread out on a half-circle of space swiped into a surface so cluttered that it and the surrounding floor resembled a multi-storey filing cabinet. Hananda had the handset of a corded phone to his ear and Cooper was cracking a sheet of paper in the air in front of him, her finger punching creases over one notation. Identical frowns bespoke some kind of disagreement. House caught the tail end of the conversation and pain speared up through his leg to his chest, lodging deep in his heart.

"You'll call Cuddy now? Thanks, Red. We'll see you…" Hananda glanced at his watch and grimaced. "Shortly."

"What's going on?"

Alarmed, House limped urgently toward the desk. The outcome of the scans couldn't be good if it warranted waking two Deans of Medicine in the small hours. A dozen dismal prospects swooped to the forefront of his mind and hung there like bats. Behind the twins, on a wall-mounted light-board, illumination glowed through the CT images, blue-black.

Cooper let go of the paper and, with a swift, practiced gesture that could have been automatic, switched off the board before he could get a good look at them. Under her breath, House was sure she muttered: "Now that's a helluva good question."

Aloud, she said with clipped dispassion: "What are you doing up here, House? We'll bring the results down as soon—"

He cut her off, anxiety and anger rising about being continuously shut out of the diagnosis, though it was no more than he would have done to any visiting medic.

"As you're done booking an O.R? Airmailing copies to the Tibetan monks? Play—"

"No," Cooper interposed, castrating his fledgling tirade. "We still use semaphore for that. But first we have to get our team in and explain to them through a good long game of Charades what kind of answers to expect when the monks reply." She gestured sardonically at the adjoining DDX office, darkly devoid of fellows and med students. "Look, if you need something from your bag, it's on the couch. Help yourself. We won't be long."

"Any longer and I'll trek to Nepal myself," he growled, peering over the desk to try and snoop at the new annotations on Wilson's file, written in a rounded, corkscrew hand. "It'd be faster."

Cooper eyed his cane.

"No," she said shortly. "It wouldn't."

Her unequivocal harshness was far cry from the skeletal civility with which she had been treating him. Unfair as it had been, House abruptly gathered that he was no longer being relegated to the status of floundering, potentially hysterical, family. Nonetheless, he glared at her, dumbfounded. Between the ranks of lowlifes who would jeer and throw empty beer bottles at anyone disfigured, moribund, or conveniently nearby and those such as Cuddy or Wilson who had earned the right to take a retaliatory pot-shot at him, most people preferred to ignore his cane than verbally kick it from under him. Unaccustomed to it, he wasn't sure if he was miffed or mildly impressed that she'd spar with him slight for slight. While he was thinking about it, Hananda's hand shot out and encircled his sister's wrist.

"Coop," he cautioned, under his breath.

They exchanged a long, unreadable look. Grudgingly, Cooper subsided and Hananda let go. He gathered up a spare copy of the scans, along with a photocopy of the file stapled together beneath the original. Folding them against his chest, he addressed House politely.

"If you'll excuse me, I'll pop down and give Jim the results." He glanced at his sister, prompting: "Will you—?"

She nodded once, a stiff, calculated concession.

"Okay." Hananda skirted the desk, but hesitated en-route to the door. "I spoke to Ben," he said and his voice held traces of some undeclared concern that ghosted across his face. "He's not on call tonight. He's home – and awake now. He says he'll wait for you."

Cooper's gritty austerity softened; one corner of her mouth bucked up and she gave her head a slight shake.

"Oh, he's going to love you," she remarked, with gentle irony. "Now _go._ I'll be fine."

The door closed with a reluctant sense of resolution.

* * *

_Resolution to what?_ Well aware of the shift in the atmosphere, which, with the passing of whatever grumbling storm he'd walked into, heavily presaged another, House tracked Hananda's withdrawal through the slat blinds. With his paperwork cradled in the crook of his arm and his head bent over it, he had acquired a studied preoccupation, as if he were choosing to be temporarily unaware of anything that might happen in his vicinity. He didn't look up even as he had to sidestep to avoid another figure striding purposefully down the corridor. The gaps between the slats afforded House fragmented glimpses of the second man as he approached and took up a post at the door: black uniform, gold stitched badge and regulation baton. The guard was back.

House knotted his fist around his cane as his guts started to practice bowlines and reefs. Either NYMH was taking his casual vandalism a lot more seriously than he'd thought or he was about to get given a reason to start breaking things again. Windows, skulls – his own on the guard's truncheon, probably. He twisted around to face Cooper with his lips already shaping repetition of _what the hell is going on?_ The words withered on his tongue as he found her waiting for him. She had Wilson's paperwork in hand and the air of an unsprung trap.

"Don't ask," she predicted, in a tone that could have chipped the edges off even his stoniest glower. Shuffling the medical files into a crescent in front of her, she pinned them in place with a bottle of wine and crossed her arms. Flinty eyes bored into his. "Unless _you're_ willing to answer, of course. Because that is _exactly_ what I want to know. _Sit down._"

House ignored her curt gesture toward a black couch that backed onto a view over the coruscant city. He was concentrating on not choking on an oesophageal surge of disgust.

"Are you _kidding_ me? Wilson's downstairs with a brain injury and you want to play professional ping-pong?"

"Want to?" Cooper cocked her head to one side, her strong, clear voice turning far too mellow to be safe. "No, not all. Will? Hell, _yes._"

The strident edge was back in trice and with it the shearing sibilance of simmering fury. Even her enunciation was sharp enough to shave with.

"Six hours ago," she announced, through teeth that snapped together on every syllable. "I had a quiet evening planned. Instead of that happening, I find myself back in my CT observation room, eyeballing a computer and ordering emergency blood panels. Meanwhile, my brother is doing triple duty as neurologist, technologist _and_ nurse, because one of our oldest friends turns the colour of old fireplace ash and quakes until his bones rattle if I, or anyone else, comes within ten feet of him.

Her voice rose and livid colour flared across her cheekbones.

"He _begged_ Kit to sedate him for the CT. For Christ's sake, House! There is _just_ about enough doctor left in him to know that he is _psychologically incapable_ of letting us run a series of basic, _essential_, diagnostic tests. So, yeah, _I want to know: __**what THE HELL is going on**__?_"

Forewarned, the question nonetheless detonated in a nuclear bellow that hung over the room with the stifling longevity of a mushroom cloud. House answered it with deathly silence. He _had_ no answer. A half-dozen snarkily pitying quips about hard-done-by surgeons having to do their own grunt work piled up in the back of his throat and died there in throes of frustration. There was no _time_ for this. While Hananda's departure made it clear that Wilson's care wasn't about to be compromised by this inquisitorial tête-à-tête with Cooper, House's extremities itched with impatience.

A quick glance at his watch showed that Friday had ticked over into the early hours of Saturday. It had been over thirty-six hours since the assault and counting. Medically, the most useful information had to be gathered within seventy-two and there was less than fifty to go before Monday swung around and other people would shove their noses into his investigation. He'd already rehashed this part in the whole sordid business for Cameron and for Cuddy and for the cops – and gone over it with Wilson himself. It was like goddamn Groundhog Day, repeating over and over with no end in sight. He hadn't got the hours to waste while Cooper jerked his chain, insisting he go back to the beginning. _Again_.

And even if he had…his mouth went dry at the thought of telling Wilson's part in it. _Why hadn't he told her himself?_ After his soapy pledges about friendship and trust, it didn't make sense that he wouldn't have given them at least the Cliff Notes version. _Why was he keeping his BFFs out of it? What_ was _it that he was so afraid to have people know?_ One more question stabbed at House's psyche like a vindictive torturer: _God, Wilson, what did you_ do?

Conscious that Cooper was gazing at him with the head-meet-wall exasperation usually reserved for those dealing with the obscure, anti-personal focus of an autistic child, House straightened and withdrew behind a reflexive, military woodenness.

He said tautly: "Everything _you_ need to know is in that file."

"This file?"

Cooper jerked the uppermost file, a spare copy, out from under the bottle and gave it a disdainful look. House extended a hand to take it and she threw it, sending the paperwork spinning past him to _smack_ down on the couch, pages shivering.

"No," she told him categorically. "It isn't."

House grit his teeth, corralling the impulse to tell her she was ten kinds of idiot. It would be infinitely more satisfying to point it all out in excruciating detail, complete with facts and figures. He stalked over to the couch and, standing beside it, snatched up the papers. In the initial furious sweep, he could see little amiss with it; he knew what was there and so there it was. But the longer he glared at it, the more inconsistencies began to glare back.

* * *

Turning pages slowly, the papers began to crinkle and crease as House studied the charts, results and notations from Wilson's recent admission with disbelief waxing even as he began to nod in understanding. Prior to Thursday, Wilson's medical file was a pristine example of one belonging to a health-conscious and healthy doctor's, regularly updated with annual physicals and sensible check-ups. In contrast, the new insertions were a shambolic montage, at best incomplete, at worst incoherent.

Nothing had been computerised. It was all hastily assembled, a series of faxes put together at the ass-end of a long day and requested before it could be typed up. There were no first-aid notations, because there had been no paramedics, just Foreman and Chase and three uselessly panic-stricken oncology nurses. Instead, the E.R. notes were on top: a cluttered, crossed out, spaghetti junction of sentences. Chase and Cameron's handwriting collided frequently in mid-paragraph, where one had taken over from the other, switching and swapping mid-procedure, as they had in the Majors Area. It was just about possible to navigate by the ABC of trauma protocol; thereafter everything fell apart into a diagnostic disaster zone. The patient, for the most part, had apparently been doubling as his own attending. It wasn't too far from the truth…

There were no records of initial presentation or patient history. Whilst trauma did not necessarily require them, the D-phase did. But Chase and Foreman had been first on the scene and House not far behind. They'd worked verbally, the only charting a few scrappy scribbles in someone's personalised shorthand. There _were_ copies of Wilson's previous CT results and a typed up report of the full neuro exam, but without a patient history to compare to it was of limited use. Sparse and chequered, there was enough information, just, to determine the extent of Wilson's injuries, what had been done to stabilise him, and to ascertain that he was in no danger. There had been little time to do any more. Every one of them had been summoned to give statements to the police. The paperwork had been abandoned until a later that hadn't yet come.

The final notation on the records was Chase's, House thought. In heavily pressed block capitals it read: admit for overnight observation. Directly beneath it, in House's own hand, was a barely legal mock up of an Against Medical Advice discharge form, because Cameron wouldn't give him a real one. Nonetheless, it had Wilson's, somewhat shaky, signature at the bottom. It had been screwed up, but some thoughtless idiot had smoothed it out and faxed it over too. The shadows of the creases were inky smudges all over the duplicate. Beneath that was the official discharge form, signed by Cuddy.

Licking his fingers, House flicked through the file again, slower still, his own disrespect for the faff and bureaucracy of charting being gradually overridden by the realisation of how it must look to an outsider, one with the sort of mind fit for a hospital inspector. The kind that actually counted the number of pills in a bottle and figured that over a hundred thousand words of hospital protocol was actually necessary when, say, the Gettysburg Address only required two hundred and sixty-six. From the point of view of someone like that, most of the usual red tape had been delegated to Edward Scissorhands. And he'd made flags out of it.

To make matters worse, Cooper had read _him_ like an augur. Guessing that he would sling the file into the nearest bin as irrelevant, she'd added her own reading material. It gave House a swift lesson in how he, and his staff, looked in the Who's Who outside Princeton Plainsboro. It was the kind of lesson that used to be administered with a length of a noosed rope and a trapdoor.

Cameron was listed as the E.R. attending, but of the three hands of his former fellow's etched all over the file hers was the most prevalent. From the amount and content of what she'd written, she could have been an amanuensis. Her name had been circled in black ink in the same corkscrew hand House had seen on new NYMH paperwork, which Cooper had deliberately _not_ handed over to him. It read: _Immunologist._ _Relatively unknown. Few publications. Worked for House '03 to '07. Fellowship completed. Resigned, reason unknown. Took a demotion at same hospital thereafter. Has not returned to Diagnostics or own speciality. Why?_

Chase's notes were the next most extensive, but the ink had run and the paper was pockmarked where his wet hair had dripped all over the pages. The conscientious idiot had shot himself in the foot with little, careful annotations. Wilson's temperature was recorded, but beside it was a parenthetical jotting (+ 0.5), warning that he'd used an ear rather than the more accurate oral or rectal thermometer. There were other, similar scribblings, indicative of someone who had at times put the patient's feelings ahead of his physical health. His name too had been circled, rather more vigorously, and his notes appended with a wary assessment. _Son of (late) Dr. Rowan Chase (Aus. Rheumatologist). Worked for House '02 to '07. Fellowship completed. __**Fired**__**.**__ Reason unknown. (Un?)reliable indicator of ability? House known to fire at random. But if he won't have him, who will? Remained at same hospital; transfer to surgical dept. Intensivist. Return to speciality. Internal politics?_

_They're good doctors, damnit!_ House thought, inside the privacy of his own head, where none, especially the ones in question, could ever demand it in writing. In person, they were better than most. But on paper... A nasty sense of responsibility curdling in his gut, House read on.

Foreman's notes were by far the most thorough, detailing Wilson's initial, E.R. and then full neurological assessments, complete with a breakdown of the CT scans. But his name had been highlighted in a blaze of yellow highlighter and black biro. House stared at Foreman's meticulous notes and then at his own emendations to them, done undiscussed and impatiently in the dark hours after he'd repeated Wilson's SOEC kit. He'd downgraded the grade three concussion to a grade one, slash, grade two, without a GCS ranking appended; it was a stupid, imprecise thing to do, now that he read it back. Despite Foreman's note that there needed to be follow-up neurological assessments, there were none recorded; House had not thought to report his own, hourly checks on his partner's condition.

Cooper's handwriting was all over this, her pen nearly dug through the paper in places, where she had clearly grown increasingly angry and concerned. Beside Foreman's name, she'd scrawled: _Neurologist._ _Employed by House, '04 to '07. Resigned, cause unknown. Employed by NYMH Nov '07. __**Fired for recklessness.**__Re-employed by PPTH Jan '08, same dept. same salary. Reason? __**blacklisted**__._ Beneath these annotations, in scarlet pen, a similar hand, presumably her brother's, had added: _Would not hire here._ _No follow-up care recorded._ _Repeat _**all**_ tests._

Grimly, House stared at the page and told himself that Foreman, at least, had dug his own grave. He turned over quickly and found himself confronting the jottings that accompanied his own name. They were written on the AMA form with the note that he would handle Wilson's aftercare. He could make out traces of the twins' earlier argument through the pages: _Request information from House? __**Medical proxy.**__ Too close?_ _Reliability as a doctor?_ _**Fired four times.**_ _Reputation well known. Medical wildcard. __**Genius/Lunatic. **_

A tiny, humourless laugh bubbled in House's throat, twitched at his lips and twisted into a bitter, down-turned smile. He'd done it. He was everyone's last resort and no one's first choice for medical care. He had a sudden vision of himself at fourteen, staring up at…himself. He was the Japanese "janitor" with an office and a pager number. He should borrow Lew the Princeton Janitor's pants and wear them backwards, just for the look of the thing. He'd become the man he'd always wanted to be: the buraku.

A strange, painful mixture of pride and disappointment at having lived both up, and down, to his own expectations, House turned the page to see if the commentary had sprawled onto the back. With a sinking heart, he found only an arrow that pointed down the next page to Cuddy's signature on the discharge forms. The annotations there read: _Not House. Ask Cuddy?_ There was a second question mark and, beneath it, Cooper had written: _cross-reference AMA form. Pressurised by House?_ _Who is in charge there?_

A new interjection came from the recess of his mind.

_You don't just let yourself down, Greg._

House flinched inwardly and hoped it didn't show.

_Shut up, Dad._ _Just_** shut up.**

Slapping the file closed, he turned angrily on Cooper and passed the buck.

"You make a habit of this, do you?" he barked. "Distrusting other doctors' diagnoses?"

She stared back at him steadily.

"Don't you?"

* * *

It had been a long damn time since anyone had impelled House to take a hard look in the mirror, professionally. It made him think marginally better of Cooper that she had. Although the glass she'd given him had come up with a picture fit for a circus funhouse. _I'm sure as hell not in Kansas anymore._ Pushed onto the defensive, House set up a counter attack, testing her as she tested him.

"There's no _need_ for the file," he informed her tersely. "We're not in medical school with some over-the-hill doctor bleating that the history is the most critical part of patient care. If you can't run an emergency differential without, you should resign your license."

Cooper pressed her lips together until they grew thin and bloodless. Dislike was etched all over her face.

"Fine," she said, in a bitingly soft tone. "We can play this game if you want. I'll keep our test and CT results here and you can keep that goddamn useless file over there and we'll play Blind Doctor's Bluff, shall we?"

House's eyes ticked from her to marked absence of her brother on the other side of the room. He almost smiled.

"You're bluffing already. You wouldn't risk Wilson's life like that."

She offered the same knowing smile back.

"Whereas you," she countered, "obviously would."

Her voice snapped like the closing of a trap.

The wrath that House had thought he had holstered exploded through him, suddenly, like the blast from a gun. He'd been conscious of it, distantly, a constant leaden pressure against his skin, just this side of too hot for comfort. Then, _bang_, it was there, everywhere. Firesnakes sizzled down every nerve, blazed through his veins and set his heart rodeoing like a trapped colt. His fists coiled and he launched up onto the balls of his feet. He hovered there for an instant, muscles clenched and twitching in his arm. Then, with no more thought to it than before, he settled back onto his heels with his hands locked securely by his sides. Through the rat-tat-tat-tat of his blood gunning in his ears, it occurred to him that, had she not been a woman, he would have lamped Cooper.

The danger of doing so gone, if it had ever been, House remained rooted in place, scarcely trusting himself to breathe. In the vacuum of silence left as his blood ceased to boil, he heard the crunch of the file being mauled in his fist. He was gripping it so hard he was dimly amazed that his fingers were not punching eight half-circles into the polythene.

Cooper watched him intently from behind the desk. She'd seen the impulse crackle through him like static, nothing of man left behind the primitive roar of fury. She stood, primed to duck, but she hadn't backed away. _And if that wasn't a goddamn metaphor, he didn't know what was._ Her braced anticipation reminded him Wilson's during his flashback and House had to swallow, hard, to rid himself of the taste of horror, which was now not only bile but watery chlorine. It left his throat sore and tight, as if he'd been choking and he knew, bitterly, how throttled Wilson must have felt, fighting his own spasming trachea for breath with every blow. It took every ounce of self-control House had left to uncurl his fingers, stiffly, one by one. He wondered if smoke was literally pouring out of his ears.

_Risk Wilson? Of course he had not! He _would_ not._ The protests raged in his head. All he'd done, all he'd been thinking, all he _could_ think about doing, was trying to _protect_ Wilson. But…_but_…he was not so blinkered by his own arrogance that he couldn't see where it had appeared he'd gone wrong. It started with the behaviour that had forced Cameron to oust him from her E.R. and the SART to ban him from the exam room. It was screwing with Wilson's files and drugging him to investigate his injuries, unknown. It was harrying his partner for the unbearable details mere hours after the police had backed off, promising to return when Wilson felt more able to talk. It was discarding the priority of _rest_ to spend four hours on the highway. It was bulldozing two specialists over a specialist case, acting as if only _he_ could oversee it, and questioning credentials he _knew_, he'd _checked_, were better for it than his own. It was breaking windows, bellowing at security and at Wilson when the twins had had him safely contained, instead of tossing him out on his ass. It finished, right here, refusing to explain what had happened, when it was medically necessary to confirm Wilson's latest diagnosis.

And yet… And yet, he'd _had_ to. He was looking at the big picture, not the smaller, short-term one. Someone had to! Someone had to make sure that Wilson would get through later, as well as now. Someone had to, yes, but…what _about_ now? House stared down at the grey-green broadloom and silently did battle with the growing sensation that he should slink off and stand in the corner, in disgrace.

* * *

"Christ, this is ridiculous." Losing patience with his continued silence, Cooper backcombed her short curls with one hand and left it crunching up a fistful over her crown. It had the look of an old habit, leftover from when her hair was longer. "House, you know I _need_ to know what happened. Wouldn't you tell me, if this was any other patient?"

_If this was any other patient…_ House closed his eyes, mentally kicking _himself_ for being ten kinds of goddamn idiot. _If this were any other patient_…no, he'd have not thought twice about unloading all the grim and gritty details necessary to make a diagnosis.

But for reasons that had nothing to do with medicine whatsoever, he felt daunted by the idea of rehashing what little he had discerned about the chain of events that had led Wilson here, in this state. _They beat him, _he thought, his nerves jangling in what Wilson would assure him was a psychosomatic mirror of his emotions. _They_ beat _him, as if he were some ignorant brat who deserved a sound thrashing for carelessness. They…_ His mind rebelled, one side coldly, clinically, shaping the word _rape_, whilst the other fumed in impotent outrage. _They—_

—_no!_ No, _damnit!_ Wilson's fluctuating bursts of panic were more than enough for his friend to have to stand under scrutiny, without an outpouring of words conjuring the stark and brutal details for anyone else to bear witness. He could imagine the twins' saucer-eyed horror, the blotchy shades of red on their cheeks that hardly suited the composure of a doctor, the way they would soften their voices and oh so kindly enjoin Wilson to let them help him. Help him so much that they would humiliate and emasculate him in the way that only being rendered utterly powerless could. _No._ House wouldn't. He couldn't. He would _not_ consort with the assailants like that.

_If this was any other patient…_

House bit into the velvety inside of his cheek, tasting blood and fear and knew he was being stupid. This personalised _don't ask, don't tell,_ it wasn't rational. It wasn't _objective._ Cooper was _right,_ damn her. His patients _died_ when he lost focus like this! He reached reflexively for his Vicodin, though his leg was nearly numb he'd been stood on it so long, and gulped down a pill. Cooper watched without commenting. Her eyes ticked to the bottle of wine in front of her and she swallowed, as if she too needed something to take the ache out of the moment.

"Look, House," she said, just a shade short of cajoling. "You're not the only person here who cares about Wilson. So let's pretend, just for now, that we're on the same side—"

In spite of himself, House felt his resolve waver. It was a point in her favour that she had been assuming they weren't too.

"—or at least two sides that are temporarily side by side."

There was a word for that. _Allies._ The people you went to war with when there was someone bigger and badder hassling you both and the people you bickered with when there wasn't. Well, for now there _were_ bigger problems. He breathed out heavily through his nose and gave a short, jerky nod.

Relief coasted briefly across Cooper's face. She circled the desk and perched on the edge of it, her fingers curling lightly around the lip, as if she suspected she were going to keep her anchored.

"Okay," she invited, more cordially than before. "Tell me what happened."

House opened his mouth to answer, but at first emitted only a hoarse squawk of air. Words failed him. His memory, photographic and finely tuned, deluged him with images, instants, scenes and stories. He shuffled through them for a place to begin and was hit by a sudden bout of abulia. Indecisive, he foundered, unable to distinguish between evidence and hypothesis.

He visualised Chase, sweaty in the afterglow of a surgical high, puttering into the changing rooms…

* * *

Chase's Hawaiian-patterned scrub cap swung on its ties from the fingers of his left hand. He sidestepped, baffled, in the doorway to the main staff room as two strangers, wet-haired, in regular clothes pushed past in haste, one elbowing him in the side.

He shouted after them: "Oy! Ever heard of 'excuse me'?"

They ignored him and Chase continued on his way, muttering under his breath.

"New residents. Bloody brats."

He passed through the gaps between the pool and Foosball tables, weaved around the overstuffed couches and punched in the code that opened the locker room door. The buttons stuttered feebly under his fingers. It was broken. _Still._ Chase gave the unsecured door a push and went on, rolling his eyes. Inside, thick steam engulfed him, the air heavy with moisture. Water pounded relentlessly in the shower cabin. _Had his boss beaten him to it again? Foisted off updating the family on one of the residents, no doubt. Corner-cutting git._ Mind idling in neutral after a high-octane surgery, Chase reached lazily for the hem of his scrub-top to strip down.

The groan was faint. Over the water, he wasn't convinced he'd heard it at first. That was the trouble with groans; you had to pause a moment to be sure it had happened, listen for another. And you never knew what you were going to find you'd been eavesdropping on. A smile tweaked the corners of his mouth. He liked screamers better. No question what was being heard then. _No wonder the residents had run for it._ Catching Ben Griggs naked and masturbating…even the Discovery Channel wouldn't show it. Chase pricked his ears carefully. There were, after all, other locker rooms.

There wasn't another groan. A softer sound: maybe a gasp or a whimper. _Ah, shite. _His smile faded. _Naked elephant sex would've been better. Why couldn't people cry in their own showers?_ He pulled his top down, started to stoop for his cap, tread back into his shoes. Another damp gasp degenerated into volley of spluttering coughs. _Shit!_ Not _crying. Hurting._ Someone was hurt. _Here?_ Surprised into action, Chase rounded the locker block and grabbed the door to the cabin. His palm skated on the handle; it was slick with red fingerprints. _Holy Mary, mother of—_! He wrenched it open.

An inner door hung in shattered disarray. The water was pouring down clear, filling the basin pink. Filaments of red eddied around the dividing screens. Blood. Lots of it, it seemed, but you could never damn tell in water. He leapt in, sploshing, his trousers drenching, dragging.

Slumped on his front, shining back rising and falling with weak, wet, bewildered breaths was—

"Oh Christ!"

Chase snapped out his pager, hit nine-one-one, the location and a number as he plunged to his knees in the water.

* * *

"House?"

"I'm thinking. Don't get your panties in a bunch."

Cooper snorted. "Oh, you are having no effect whatsoever on my panties."

She waited, her fingers drumming on the edge of the desk.

* * *

In the DDX room Foreman stopped mid-tirade, two words away from calling his boss a moron. He pulled off his pager, frowned, and jumped to his feet. House hobbled briskly to the door and blocked his way.

"Faking pages is my trick." He barred his teeth, pretended to growl. "Get your ow—"

Rapid footsteps in the corridor interrupted. A distant nurse exclaimed crossly at the small river forming behind two hurrying strangers. Their clothes clung to them, sloppy and dripping. The woman was flushed, the man ashen. He gripped her, white-knuckled, at the elbow.

Foreman pushed past House to intercept them.

"Excuse me, sir, ma'am – are you hurt?"

"Excuse us." The man, tall and thin, cinched an arm around his wiry companion, hustling her onward. "Medical emergency."

Foreman followed their puddling trail toward the locker rooms, perplexed.

"FOREMAN! Get in here! Help me!" Chase's yell echoed from the depths of the distant chamber.

The strangers had reached the exit stairs. They broke into a run.

"Stop them!" Foreman bellowed over his shoulder, gesturing, and sprinted toward Chase.

Kutner leapt from his chair and pelted in the opposite direction, Taub on his heels. Thirteen snapped open her phone, dialling security.

"Hel-_lo_? Not your patient!"

Snorting in the sudden flurry of idiotic heroics, House tramped curiously out into the corridor, as nurses converged suddenly from one direction, guards from the other. No point in running to join them; his damn leg always left him a bystander. Still he could watch, mock them later, maybe cheer up an overly conscientious Wilson, who was all solemnity and self-flagellation about a couple of death-row patients…

_Those_ patients.

_That_ family.

_Wilson_.

House forgot he couldn't run. By the door to the locker room, he no longer needed his cane.

* * *

"House? Hey!" A snap of broken-nailed, brown fingers. "Seriously, cat got your tongue?"

Lost in his own head, House palmed the length of his thighs and shivered.

* * *

Wilson. Oh God. _Wilson._ And water. Everywhere. It beat down overhead, a continual rainstorm, erupting in plumes as people scrambled to manoeuvre, palpating plump flesh beneath pruning skin.

More blood flowed. Foreman had cut his hand on a shard of broken shatterproof glass.

"Damnit!" Heedless of contagion, he stuck his injured thumb in his mouth and sucked. He jerked it out a split-second later, gawping at his own idiocy. "Shit. We need to move him. _Now._"

There was no way to get a gurney into the cabin, cramped by modesty screens. The nurses struggled with a towel, trying to stretch it under Wilson to use as a hoist. The terry cotton slapped and stuck to their skin, twirled itself into a wringing knot. Someone ran for a backboard and stretcher.

House knelt in sodden jeans and squelching sneakers, stabilising Wilson's cervical spine by holding head on his thighs. Water beat a weakening tattoo on his back as he hunched over, using his body to shield Wilson from the worst of it. It didn't even occur to him to turn the taps off.

Wet hair, matted with blood, clung to his palms. He shifted one to Wilson's forehead, the other to his left shoulder and thumbed the gooseflesh there smooth. Wilson stared up at him, wide-awake now, his teeth clenched. His eyes were like dark bubbles, which at any moment might burst.

* * *

"_House._" Darker eyes, near black under a wrinkled brow, peered into his intently. "You okay there? You look as though you're experiencing a post-traumatic stress response."

Shock. To be colloquial about it. Emotional shock. House scoffed and shook out another Vicodin, dry-swallowing. _He_ wasn't the one in shock. He had no right – no _time_ – to be. Cooper's brows formed a sceptical vee. Her voice encouraging, persuasive, she persisted:

"You were going to tell me what happened."

The recollections gushed on, garish, noisy; House cleared his throat and began to speak, clinical, monotone.

_"The patient presented to the E.R. with acute traumatic injuries sustained in a physical altercation…"_

_

* * *

_

"On three. One. Two. _Three._"

Foreman, Chase, Cameron and Latino resident took the corners of the stretcher, heaved it from gurney to bed in the majors sector. The inevitable jolt as it settled made Wilson yelp. The pink privacy curtains ballooned in the draft created by their movements. House burst them aside with his cane.

His former team encircled his partner, squirming around each other in the limited space of the E.R. berth like a box full of wet puppies. Unlike the steady routine of non-traumatic treatment, working linearly through history, exam, tests, diagnosis, treatment, they responded on the fly, treating as they evaluated Wilson's condition.

Checking the stiff collar, towels, and tape that had replaced House's hands were effectively stabilising Wilson's c-spine, Cameron bent low and looked him in the eye.

"Dr. Wilson. It's Dr. Cameron. How're you feeling?"

She cocked her head anxiously to the side to listen out for the rattles, gurgles and crackles of laboured respiration.

"Cameron?" Wilson coughed harshly, and tried to raise a hand to ward her away. His body convulsed painfully as the movement was abbreviated by the restraints on the backboard. "Ouch. _Damnit._" He coughed again, voice rasping. "I'm okay. I can breathe."

_Breathe_ was an overstatement as far as House, hovering between the gaping curtains, was concerned. _Okay_ was simply ludicrous. Wilson's breaths came shallow and wheezing, as if the air was being shuttled around his lungs, trying to find an absorption surface that hadn't been turned to marshy floodplain by inhaled water.

"Airway's intact," Cameron said, quick and clipped, speaking to everyone and to no one in particular. "Someone get me an oxygen mask, 12 litres per minute! Wilson, I need you to open your mouth for me. I have to check for potential obstructions."

He flinched as she tried to move her fiancé aside. Chase was stooped over him, swapping gauze for the towels he'd tamped firmly down over the lacerations to Wilson's chest. Blood bloomed crimson through the herringbone fibres, already translucent from soaking up the water. Disregarding both, Cameron wriggled into the gap between him and ventilation equipment the resident was assembling beside the bed.

"Wilson. Did you hear me? Open your mouth."

He bit his lip, hard enough to pucker it, unable to turn his head away in the brace. His eyelids flickered, as if it were instinct to cram them shut, but he didn't, _couldn't_. What had begun as shivers, cold, shock, became trembles. House started forward, spoke.

"Cameron–"

To his astonishment, he went unheard in the hullabaloo of an everyday E.R: raised voices, bleeping pagers, the constant crackle of tannoy announcements, squealing trolley wheels, curtains chattering on their rails, patients groaning, shrieking, crying, and cursing, the rapid fire interchanges of doctors triaging and historicising tall tales. Unaware of his boss, or uncaring, Foreman elbowed him in the gut as he scrunched back his sodden sleeves, splattering water in all directions. Staggered, disregarded, House gripped the rail at the base of Wilson's bed. For all his ability to think in the loops and twists that trauma treatment demanded, he worked better in semi-isolation, vocalising, planning ahead. Deafened by the noise, the melee of hands and actions, working in half-sentences and near telepathic synergy, he could hardly think and he fixated, stunned, by the raw fear that tore up his partner's face as Cameron tried to slip a finger in his mouth, thinking he hadn't understood.

"Don't touch me!"

"Wilson, it's okay. It's—Wilson_. _Wilson!_ James!_"

Cameron gasped as Wilson jerked on the backboard, trying to recoil from her, and started to struggle. More blood spilled through the dressings, poured over his slick, paling skin. Chase swore.

"Damn! I need succinyl choline 1-2 milligrams per kilogram—"

"Ninety," House barked at the resident, a split-second of connection, calm.

"No! No! Stop! _Dr. Cameron!_" Wilson flinched and flattened against the bed as she wielded the needle. She hesitated and he bunched his fist into the edge of the heavy grey blankets draped over his lower half, breath sloughing, shuddering, as he wrested his panic under control. "_Don't_ use a paralytic. It—it wouldn't be a good idea right now."

Cameron faltered, lowering her hand. In spite of the choke in Wilson's voice, bespeaking blood and water at least still clotting in his trachea, she instinctively listened to him, yielding to his strained authority. Relief flashed through Wilson's eyes and he subsided, panting.

"Chase, could you, please? Sorry, Cameron, I'll be a lot calmer if…" He raised a faint, improbable smile as she laid the needle down, nodding. "Thank you."

"Okay." Stepping in as his fiancée stepped away, Chase took the penlight from her unresisting hand. "It's okay, Wilson, I gotcha."

Moving smoothly, the only one seemingly unperturbed, the intensivist left Foreman to hold the dressings over Wilson's open wounds. Working rapidly, he continued, checking mouth and airways for teeth, blood clots and other debris. House looked on, told himself he was overseeing.

Chase nodded quickly to Cameron, before moving onto the chest exam.

"Crepitance in the fifth, sixth and seventh anterior ribs – ow, sorry, Wilson – and multiple chest contusions. Respiration shallow and elevated with unilateral decreased breath sounds on the right. Mild. No accompanying paradoxical motion – negative for flail chest for now – and no signs of hypoxia." He ascultated, tapping rapidly. "No hyper-resonance or dullness on percussion, indicating negative for haemothorax and pneumothorax. Stabilising with oxygen."

He took the mask from her, fitting it carefully over Wilson's nose and mouth. Briefly, almost too quickly to see, he touched Wilson's uninjured shoulder.

The male resident stepped in, deftly hooking a cardiac monitor with wires like colourful spaghetti. Astute grey eyes measured heart tones and watched the rhythms on the monitor. House stared at them, the jagged scribbles nonsense against the flatline screaming in his ears. Wait. It _was_ his ears. A sudden ringing, unconnected to the machines. Once he realised it, his head began to thump with staccato beat of Wilson's heart.

Chase followed through the rest of the trauma ABC, measuring gestault, skin tone, pulse, and temperature. Wilson hissed as he inserted two large bore catheters into a peripheral vein, while Foreman changed over the dressings.

"Hooking up the IV fluids," Cameron interjected from the background, hanging boluses to infuse fluids at 20 millilitres per kg body weight and connecting them quickly to the IVs. Her hands were shaking.

"I'll handle the lacerations. Foreman. _Foreman!_" Chase shoved the neurologist's hands away from the dressings. "Bloody pull yourself together!"

Foreman startled and shot him a black look. Could he shoot any other kind? What did that have to do with anything? House blinked and missed the moment Foreman grabbed his pocket penlight to begin the diagnostic phase of trauma: a basic neuro exam. _Okay. It was okay._ The worst was on hiatus, a lull of stabilisation. There was no change in the room's fluctuating commotion; but House could think again, swift and clear.

"Move." He elbowed his way in, unable to stand – or sit – through a volley of meaningless questions, when they could cover the primary and secondary phases of assessment simultaneously. "What happened? Wilson! Look at me!"

"House! Not now."

Foreman jostled him, their shoulders bumping in the narrow space. The dot of bright light wriggled all over Wilson's face. He crunched up his eyes, wincing, and called over their squabbling:

"_House_. House, stop it. Let them handle this."

House didn't realise he was still moving until Foreman stumbled over his cane, roared and kicked at it.

"Get him outta here!"

"C'mon." Chase materialised in front of him, solid and stern. "You need to leave."

House squared up, livid, but his former fellow stepped closer, undaunted. His genial face was impassive beneath his floppy hair.

"Get out of my—"

"No."

Chase was stronger than he looked. House found himself rapidly manhandled toward the door. Chase's hands were hard on his wrists, locked behind him, his leg shot bolts of agony as he was forced to step full onto it with every other stride. The damn Kiwi's accent was soft in his ear.

"I'm sorry."

"You're fired," House gritted back, futilely, since Chase no longer worked for him. He pretended to stumble, threw Chase off balance—

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Cooper interjected, gnawing on the end of her biro. "Wilson was _assaulted_?"

House broke off from his curt, concise monologue. He'd thought he'd made that perfectly clear, even restricting himself deliberately to only the bare bones of the clinical findings, bridging the gaps in the tatty record-keeping. He slanted a narrow look at her, fingers flexing compulsively over his pill bottle. He would not be solicited to share the vivid details duplicating themselves endlessly throughout his mind. He would _not_ be drawn into any heart-clutching exchange of condolences.

"Rabid cheerleaders," he snapped. "The pocket protector is a real turn-on."

Cooper shot him a withering look down the length of her pen.

"Don't screw with me, House. I'm not in the mood."

Neither was he.

"It was a patient. He was assaulted by a patient."

Cooper coughed on a bit of plastic chewed off the end of her pen. She swallowed and thumped her chest, eyes watering. Her startled expression faded through several shades of annoyance to outright disbelief.

"When Wilson gets assaulted by a patient, it's a kick in the shins by a kid in a headscarf," she challenged tartly. "What _kind_ of assault, House?" She held up a hand, forestalling his vehemently brewing retort. "_Clinically_. What was the nature of it?"

Oh. That.

House closed his eyes, grimacing, and was back in the E.R.

* * *

"Chase! Get back here!" Foreman's holler curtailed his escape attempt, got him free regardless.

His path of return was blocked when Cameron scooted toward them, her face white and worried.

"He won't let me touch him. I don't know—never mind. Do a head-to-toe exam – areas of concern are spine and abdomen in this type of trauma. Place an NG tube and check the aspirate for blood. Palpate all extremities—"

"Allyson," Chase grasped her shoulders, tried to catch her eye. "I know how to do it."

She continued, as if she hadn't heard. She was sweating, talking too fast.

"Check _and mark_ all peripheral pulses. There're pens – there's a pen – a marker. Here. Look for neurovascular deficits and stabilise all breaks. Check motor function and skin sensation. Don't forget to do the log-roll to check his spine and do a rectal exam. Insert a foley catheter. And get complete vital signs."

She handed over a rectal thermometer, her eyes refocusing as she returned to the now from the depths of her mental textbook. She frowned, as Chase turned green and loosened his hold on her.

"God. You didn't—?"

Droplets flew from his hair as he gave his head a sharp shake and threw the thermometer aside. He snapped his fingers at a nurse and demanded an ear thermometer.

"Robert!" Cameron was high and thin. "It's not accurate."

"So I'll add point five Celsius!" Chase swerved past her, prioritising. "Let me handle this. You didn't see—"

He broke off, shaking his head, visibly agitated. House felt his knee joints weaken, as his brain leapt to a conclusion he couldn't yet accept or verbalise.

_No._

_

* * *

_

No.

House cut himself off mid-sentence, his mouth mercifully several seconds behind his mind. No. That was not in the medical file. Nor was it anything a neurologist needed to know, whatever it was doing to his head. It wasn't blood or bone or greyscale matter. It was nothing that they could fix.

He continued where he'd left off, ordering the disarranged information into bite-sized points.

"After stabilisation, a diagnostic assessment was performed by Drs. Foreman and Chase, with Dr. Cameron assist—overseeing. Injuries in order of severity were as follows: a grade three concussion – downgraded after careful observation to a grade one, borderline, two, with a score of thirteen…"

In his head, the full, chaotic aftermath continued.

* * *

_No._

"Oh my God."

Cameron's tongue flicked across her lips and her eyes fluttered closed, catching on.

"Okay," she murmured, as if she had to convince herself. "Okay, we'll moderate procedure accordingly. You get a trauma panel done and down to the STAT lab. Do _everything_: CBC, UA, electrolytes, blood gases, clotting studies, and type & crossmatch."

She darted a questioning glance at House, seemed disconcerted when it occurred to him too late to nod to her. Chase's forehead furrowed, recollection skittering across his features.

"There was a syringe. One of the assailants—I'll get a tox screen too."

"Okay." Still scrambling to explain her way through a job she had learned to do on autopilot, Cameron bobbed her head up and down vigorously. "As soon as he's completely stabilised he's going to need a head CT and cross-table X-rays: skull, c-spine, chest, and left arm. Page one of the carpenters – Jackie Bishop's the best in ortho – to set the breaks. Make sure you scan for internal injuries. _Keep monitoring him._ I'll call PGH's SART."

"Call them and call the lawyers." House barged between them, striding back toward the bed, eyes scouring it for _proof_, some visible sign or symptom of a trauma he couldn't yet name. "No. Get a _scalpel_. We won't prosecute. I'll damn well _castrate_ them."

Wilson's eyes jerked from Foreman's, found his and shied away, cringing closed. Unmannly anguish mutated into untempered fury and House stormed toward him, thrusting Foreman aside.

"Wilson! _Look at me._ What. Did. They. Do?" He snatched up Wilson's left hand and froze, transfixed by the skin only marred by the catheters embedded in his dorsal arch vein. His rage found a target and he let fly, heedless of the echo of his father's voice in his, which would have sickened him to his stomach. "What the _hell_ happened in there? What were you _doing_—?"

"House!" Foreman propelled him backward, one broad hand a battering ram against his sternum. Abhorrence and incredulity contorted his large mouth, flared his nostrils and burrowed thick lines into his brow. "Get. Out. Of. Here."

House thumped his arm, sought to get past him. Wilson had gone stiff, his features shuttered and ghostly; the unnatural laxity, the loss of all expression, was postural scream. Strange urges wracked House: to shout, to hold him, to shake him, to beg him, to do…nothing that would help. He stalled behind Foreman's hand and simply stared. For the first time in his medical career, he didn't know _what_ to do.

* * *

Cooper's pen scratched on paper, adding and amending information as House reeled it off. He grew aware that at intervals she was scrutinising him for longer than was comfortable, her head cocked to one side like a bird of prey.

"The alteration to the concussion assessment, why was that?"

House paused, mid-spiel, gradually realising that she must have drawn her own conclusions. There were only two real tipping factors between the degrees of minor head injury after all. He answered anyway, trying to gauge her reaction.

"Memory. Wilson's experiencing retrograde amnesia. I think it's symptomatic of a post-traumatic stress response, not the trauma."

Cooper jotted that down.

"And how long was he unconscious for?"

House shifted his weight, uncomfortable; parathesis was prickling up and down his leg. The hand holding his cane tingled too. He flexed his fingers and palm, which immediately began to throb from the increasing list of his unbalanced weight. Pain danced a spiteful jig up through his hip and neck and back too, alerting him to every kink and crook from where he was half-consciously leaning away from the pain and, fully consciously, striving to stand straight whilst he went head-to-head with this damned woman. He stared at the carpet as the room wavered dizzingly out of his weary focus and made it spin a little more by shaking his head.

"That's not clear. He thought it might have been a while, but he doesn't remember that either."

"Was the attacker caught? Did anyone ask him?"

House shook his head.

"No."

_Why the hell hadn't they thought of that?_

Cooper's pen hesitated at the margin of her file. She considered him for a moment, guardedly, as though he were doing something shifty. She licked her lips, rather nervously, he thought, and made an abbreviated gesture with the mangled pen.

"Go on."

* * *

"House, come on." Cameron was tugging at his sleeve. "I need you to leave. Come one. We've got this, House."

He snatched his arm away from her roughly, putting his all into the gesture, hoping to bully her into leaving him be. But she barely blinked. Even when she was flailing as a doctor, she was apparently incapable of not playing nursemaid. He thumped his cane impatiently.

"Move it or lose it, Cameron. I'm not leaving – and you're wasting resources. I can give you half the answers the tests can."

"Good." She stuffed a chart up against his chest, seized his hand and clamped it against it, pinning both in place with a little shove. "Go out into the waiting room. Take this and give me a full medical history – medications, allergies, last meal – and find his patient file. I'll get the rest of the scene information from Chase."

"Fuck the chart!" House flicked his wrist and sent it scudding across the room. It _whopped_ into a nearby curtain and startled a curse out of the body behind it. "Medications: Prozac, Lithium; last meal three hours ago, half a sandwich, a handful of fries and a mocha. Allergies: ceftriaxone and some relatives, including cefaclor, cefadrocil, cefalexin and cefradine – avoid the cephalosporins in general and probably the oxacephems. Penicillin isn't a problem. Blood type is O neg, by the way. You need me. Stop babysitting me and do your job!"

Cameron crossed her arms over her breasts and stayed planted squarely in front of him, apparently unafraid of becoming part of the hospital geography.

"I can't when you're upsetting my patient! House, Wilson doesn't need this right now. If you're really his friend, you'll—_House!_"

Piqued beyond anything he could hope to contain, House strode into her, through her, shouldering her aside as he headed back toward the bed. His right foot hit the floor without his cane. He tripped, caught himself, and flung a disbelieving look over his shoulder. Cameron had snatched it from him. She had an odd, apologetic smile on her face. A strong, slim hand swooped into his line of vision, descended on his upper arm and gripped like a vice, nails digging into all the pressure points that would make him hiss and submit.

"Outside, Greg. _Now._"

Lisa Cuddy took the cane from Cameron, interlocked her arm through his, and guided him firmly away.

* * *

"…and, finally, the patient has minor lacerations to the upper, mid and lower left quadrants of the torso…"

House tailed off, gouging at his eyes with his knuckles. Cuddy's adamantine gaze lingered in his mind as she propelled him into the waiting room and tripped him into a chair. Before he could so much as curse, she crouched in front of him, one hand locked warningly around his injured thigh. A syringe winked and dripped in her right hand.

"This is Thorazine," she said, clear and calm and remarkably kind. The needle hovered over his left femoral muscle. "I had Dr. Wood bring it down from the psych ward. Greg, if you don't sit down and stay out of the way, I will personally see you tranquilised and strapped to a bed until you have calmed down."

She would. He didn't doubt it for a second. Nor was she stupid enough to try to emotionally blackmail him. There was a frank unreserved honesty on her aquiline face as her hand left the trembling scar tissue of his thigh and stroked soothingly down his arm.

"This isn't helping, House. This isn't like you."

_No. It wasn't._ He dragged a breath in and, little by little, subsided under her touch. He rallied, garrotting all emotion to adopt his customary jester's veneer.

"It's not like you either," he pointed out. "You offering to get me stoned, Dr. Cuddy?"

He manufactured just enough of a leer to cajole a feeble little chuckle out of her.

Then needle slipped from her grasp and rolled away down the shallow slope on the concave chair seat beside him. She wrapped both her hands around his and bent forward until their brows touched. Until her upper abdomen brushed against his knees, he hadn't realised that she too was trembling.

* * *

Recollecting that moment now, something in the pained way she'd spoken or the fingertip hold she'd seemed to need to maintain on his arm got through to him. It hadn't only been for Wilson's sake that they had kicked him out. It had been for his too. They had been protecting him, trying to spare him the gut-wrenching, unforgettable experience of seeing every one of his partner's injuries before there'd been time to clean up the blood and suture and attempt to make things look more what they were and less as dreadful as the mess would make them seem.

He hadn't thought of it at the time. If he had he'd almost certainly have been furious that they thought he needed to witness Wilson's injuries only by degrees, as he helped his partner wash and change, replace his dressings and start his recovery. They hadn't known he'd plunge in, headlong, as always, only the crepuscular dimness and the brilliant geometry of the bedside lamps to shield him as he re-did the SOEC kit and catalogued every one of Wilson's injuries alone.

He'd been so sure he was in command of himself, then. But reflecting on his own head-to-toe exam as he filled in the final details that Cooper might need to complete her diagnosis, he found that, instead of the careful, methodical rendering of the knowledge he'd expected, it came back to him in fragments. Little freeze-frames of information snapped in front of his eyes, out of sequence, obliterating narrative coherency by reproducing the moments he'd become transfixed, struck by the wobbly stitches that evidenced a slight shake in the hand that had done the suturing, the flayed sprays of skin where bony prominences had been dragged over grip-tiles, the mottled, turgid humps of bone-deep bruising, the stifled catches in Wilson's breathing or the sourceless shadows that shied across his face, making his Adam's apple bob and try to jump out of his throat.

Reliving it, House stiffened and straightened his back, fending off the disorientating sense that he was tumbling where he stood. The downcast feeling was literally _cast down_ through him like an avalanche of exhaustion, not simple tiredness, not even of the worn-down, rusting out kind he bore on a daily basis, but the debilitating kind that stuffed up his nose and throat, made his joints creak, and his muscles threaten to slump from his bones. It was the kind of tired that foreboded illness, a stonking cold or a great black bout of depression that would lay him out for a week, and leave him weak and miserable in its wake. As soon as he'd finished cataloguing every last detail of Wilson's injuries, House dropped heavily onto the black cushions on the couch.

* * *

Cooper contemplated him thoughtfully, the soft ticking of a clock somewhere on a nearby wall mimicking the workings of her brain as she glanced between him and the file in her lap, mentally reconfiguring the garbled curlicues there into a coherent assessment.

"Thank you," she said, after a few moments. Closing the file she looked up and her chest rose and fell with a long, indrawn, preparatory breath before she said with grave conviction: "Now. What _aren't_ you both telling me?"

House's jaw slackened and for a few seconds he gawped stupidly at her. Too late he snapped it closed. He wanted to slap her for seeing through the wool he'd tried to pull over her eyes. He wanted to _like_ her. He crushed both impulses mercilessly. Fabricating offence, he said gruffly:

"Are you calling me a liar, Dr. Cooper?

"The shoe fits, Cinderella." Cooper shrugged lightly. "I may not know you very well, but I know Jim. I know when he's trying to protect someone. Whether or not they deserve it."

Her eyes lit on House, probing like searchlights. He frowned, started to wonder what she was implying, then her pupils clouded over and he couldn't be sure whether she had been looking at him or if he was merely within her sightline as her focus turned unhappily inward.

"Congratulations," he growled, unwillingly, and with his eyes on the wine bottle beside her. "Have a drink."

The crows' feet edging Cooper's eyes deepened and the corners of her mouth bent up into a cynically unamused smile. Realising that she'd gained the upper hand, she pressed the advantage.

"Let me put it another way," she said, purposefully ignoring the bottle. "Did he cheat on you?"

House was unexpectedly reminded of why he'd agreed to this foolhardy trip in the first place. Ruthless as she was, Cooper had directly echoed Wilson's disorientated mumblings as he roved the addling betwixt between fear and sleep only hours after the attack. _You think I cheated, don't you?_ A very small, pessimistic part of House thought for the second time, _I do now_; the rest pummelled it disgustedly into silence. He glared at Cooper, ashamed of himself and of her for subscribing to Wilson's worst, if sometimes accurate, opinion of himself.

"Yeah," he sneered, the words curdled with scorn. "Wilson tripped on his way out of someone else's bed. No. I _told_ you. He was treating someone who turned out be related to Norman Bates. It wasn't…" he faltered and, distressed with himself, finished emphatically, "his fault!"

Cooper shook her head, tracing a finger across a line of test results. The fine muscles of her right cheek were all snarled up with jaded tension.

"I'm not attributing blame anywhere," she said, in a tone that was neither neutral nor yet discernibly anything else. "This is purely deductive." She tapped the file with a well-chewed fingernail. "It's not standard practice to run a full STD panel after a common assault – or to prescribe anti-HIV drugs. It would have to be _un_common. It's hardly a wild mental leap to conclude that some sort of unprecedented sexual activity took place. It _is_ a toss-up as to whether it took place during…or before."

She flicked a glance at him then and her eyes were not neutral at all. They burned darkly in the room's actinic twilight, like steel released from a flame long enough to turn deceptively black, as if cool, and still scald. House's sat up straighter; another inkling of her suspicions rendered him mute with incredulity. A split-second later he forgot all about being offended on his own behalf; the lingering sparks of fury dwindled in a rush of ice.

"You've seen him like this before, haven't you?"

Cooper held up a hand and ducked behind it, looking down and away behind her, as if something had ghosted past her shoulder. She said cagily to the carpet:

"I've seen him _something_ like this before."

And _that_ was why he was here. She knew something. Something that House didn't know. Something that Wilson had kept from him. Something old, going back maybe as many as twenty, twenty-five, years. Something that—his brain tripped over its own thought tracks. No. _No._ Surely not?

Snippets of interactions skittered before his mind's eye, momentary segments he'd thought were randomised, attributable to innocent causes, red herrings if one was searching for pieces of a puzzle. The way Wilson always jumped when House threw a door open. How he was never _quite_ where you'd reached out if you went to casually touch him. His surprised stiffening if he wasn't the one to initiate contact. His dedication to his partner's pleasure in bed, but how subtly ill at ease he became when it came to reciprocity, someone else taking control. How long it had taken him to come around to the idea of being bisexual. His adamant refusal to publicly come out. The dozen or more gagging – _don't touch me!_ – attempts it had taken him to even tolerate giving head. (_Sorry, House, I'm sorry. I had my jaw dislocated once and it sometimes clicks out of place). _The half-dozen hands-off rules that still accompanied that act…

It couldn't be, could it? A schizophrenic brother. An uncle he didn't get on with. A nebulous incident at a college party that Wilson never talked about. Any or all of those could mean that… That it was not shock that had him so disturbingly composed. Was it _experience?_ House stared in blank dismay at a point on the wall and willed the room to stop pretending it was a merry-go-around. Could he have missed it?

Could _he_, of all people, have missed it?

* * *

Scarcely aware of what he was doing, House leaned back and let his eyes drift up to the ceiling in a vague appeal to…he didn't know who. Thales, perhaps, or Plato, or Galen, maybe even Descartes. His stare drifted dazedly from the abstract patterns the lamps had painted up the wall to Cooper. Her countenance too was twitching with tiny, emotional fasiculations, her mind visibly racing. He couldn't tell whether they were neck and neck or zooming around separate stadiums.

"When?" he demanded, hollowly.

She was good. Almost as good as he – no, as _Wilson –_ was. Instead of her face going blank, she pasted on an expression. It would've been a near perfect visual feint, were it not for the fact that it was nigh on impossible, under the circumstances, for her to _be_ that indifferent.

"No." She shook her head decisively. "You'd have to ask him about…the party."

"Fine."

Nodding quickly in acknowledgement, House mentally filed the clue.

"Okay."

Cooper closed the medical file she'd been annotating again, set it to one side, and reached behind her for a copy of the new paperwork. Leaning forward, she passed that across the gap between the desk and the couch. Apparently at a loss for what to do with her hands, she picked up the half-empty wine bottle, uncapped it, and distractedly took a swig.

"Right," she said, swiftly trading it for her copy of the file again. "Wilson gave me the go-ahead earlier to share the results with you, so here's what we've got. The initial assessment determined a GCS score of 12-13. Conclusions were complicated by the presence of narcotic analgesics and other traumatic injuries. As you know the GCS score is the sum of E plus M plus V. E, eye response, was spontaneous, rating 4 out of a possible 4; M, motor response, was localised pain, rating 5 out of a possible 6; V, verbal response, was 4 out of a possible 5, indicated by conversance but disorientation.

"Moving on to the neurological assessment, bilateral pupils were small – probably the effect of opiate analgesics administered in a bottle labelled Tylenol throughout the day. I'm guessing that was you, not Wilson?"

She barely waited for his nod of affirmation.

"Pupillary response was normal, reactive to direct and consensual stimuli. The history confirmed that the left intermittent esotropia is pre-existing; you've probably noticed his left eye turns inwards as a result of stress or fatigue. There's a minor bilateral nystagmus; there's likely to be vision distortion and cataracts in twenty years or so, but again it's all unrelated to the MTBI.

She paused again, unnecessarily – he didn't need time to absorb the information – before continuing.

"The motor examination was significantly restricted by the rib, shoulder, arm and knee injuries, limiting symmetric comparisons of strength tests and pain response. Sensory exam and peripheral reflexes were likewise unreliable. Standard blood panel has come back within normal ranges."

"And the tox screen?" House prompted, when Cooper turned the page, glanced down and turned over again. Leafing through the new results in sync with her, he could see from the mismatched headers that it had not been included in his copy. "You must have done one, if you found out about the Vicodin."

"I'm sorry." Cooper looked genuinely apologetic. "That I don't have clearance to give you."

_What the—? _There was no way Wilson was on any drugs that House didn't know about; he was too cautious to risk a bad interaction, especially now. Which meant he might not be on something he _should_ be on. _Three guesses which ones and the first two guesses don't count, _House thought dourly, recalling his partner's fuzzy indifference toward the HIV preventatives, his sharp reminder that it hadn't been _his_ idea to get an SOEC kit done, and yet his sudden recoil from kissing House the previous day. _Jesus, Wilson…. _Could he not, as he said, remember enough to be sure when, or if, or how, the assault had turned sexual? Or was he swinging too hard between technicolour, the-hills-are-alive, flashing-back certainty and a desperate, fingers-and-toes grip on denial? Did it really matter? House resigned himself to spending the last few hours before dawn going through Walker and Granville's medical files with a fine-toothed comb and praying they were up to date.

"I've got the CT films here."

Cooper went around the desk to pluck them off the light board, tramped over to stand beside him and held them up to the light. Rather than trust his leg with his weight, House took them from her and squinted at them in the less than optimum conditions.

"We used a non-contrast scan spanning the base of the occiput to the top of the vertex in 5mm increments. The bone windows – cranial vault, skull base and facial bones – show no signs of fractures. Within the tissue and subdural windows, you can see that there's a 2cm simple hepatic cyst in the anterior segment of the right lobe. It's just a doodad, non-symptomatic and it hasn't ruptured, so the chances are pretty good that nothing needs to be done about it. Might be worth rescanning in six months to double-check, but that's a judgement call.

"CT otherwise shows minimal pathology. There's some evidence of neurological deficits, vertigo, disorientation, tinnitus, partial retrograde amnesia, all should resolve fully without specific treatment. We've resuscitated his fluid levels and we're using the IV to maintain euvolemia in conjunction with an anti-emetic. Tossing his cookies all through yesterday evening, night and today put his potassium, glucose, and sodium levels in the basement.

"The bed's elevated to 25 degrees to improve venous outflow in the brain and keep his intercranial pressure down, although that's simply precautionary – there's no cause for concern at present. The nasal canula is predominantly precaution too, countering the respiratory depression caused by the opiod analgesics he's been taking and to avoid any further coughing, which would increase venous pressure and restrict drainage, backing up blood to the brain and increasing ICP. There're a few more bits and pieces in here that you can look over if you like, but the main thing you need to hear is this.

"He got lucky, House. He must've hit his head on things that made more noise than they did actual damage, both times. Pipes, the hollow wall of the elevator. There's nothing here, measured against what you've told me, that indicates any significant damage. However, there's some troublingly out of character behaviour, which could be as much a result of the head trauma as the cumulative effect of the assault. It's compromising treatment, so he's been placed on short-acting sedatives to keep him calm, whilst enabling periodic neurological assessments over the next eight hours. He's staying here at least until the morning. We'll reassess at…" she paused to glance at her watch, "nine a.m. tomorrow. Provisionally I'm going to recommend that he remain here until the evening. Gallivanting up the Turnpike is contraindicated in treatment for a head injury."

House sucked his lower lip, but didn't try to look abashed. Whatever the risks, what he'd found out so far had been more than worth it. He shrugged and said simply:

"It wasn't my idea."

"Somehow, I didn't think it would be."

What was _that_ supposed to mean? The elongated, weighty emphasis on the words made House furrow his brow, chary. Cooper was watching him a little too penetratingly for comfort. She drew her pager out of her pocket, scrolled through the recent messages and read aloud:

"_Dear Julie Andrews, no excuses this time. Any changes, you and Pavarotti come meet me at midnight in Joyce Kilmer's parking garage. Do __**not**__ let House blow you off. __**Seriously.**__ Believe nothing. J._"

She looked up and again House caught the sharp gleam of misgivings in her eyes, winking like twin sword points waiting at his throat for one false move. Her voice was measured and appraising as she said:

"You know, it's hard to tell what's sarcasm and what's serious without a tone of voice to go on. I _thought_ it was a joke."

Brows quizzically cocked, House grunted: "Because Joyce Kilmer doesn't _have_ a parking garage?"

"Because Jim has secret aspirations to star in a remake of the _Italian Job_ and he isn't done mocking me for a little incident we had in surgery last year," Cooper retorted acidly. "Because it _sounds_ like a joke. Or it did until he turned up looking like someone went after him with a two-by-four…or similar."

Her attention lit briefly on the long, solid mahogany shaft resting between House's thighs and then rose to focus on his face, pointedly.

House huffed in his throat, insulted and marvelling in equal measure. There weren't many people who'd have the gall to look him in the eye after an insinuation like that. She got a little credit for doing so. He was tempted to repeat the Ed Gein explanation for Wilson's injuries and then stick his cane tip to the end of his nose as if it were rapidly growing, but he was sure now that she'd take it as evidence. She was wrong. So wrong. But against his will he could see how she'd put two and two together and come up with twenty-two. It should've been reassuring to have proof that she was just another mathematically retarded idiot. He shouldn't've felt the unspoken accusation like a punch in the sternum, taking his breath away.

He dropped his eyes first and rolled his cane between his fingers, his voice brittle it was so dry.

"I suppose you've figured that we just _call_ it a nightstick fracture? It doesn't have to be caused by an actual nightstick."

Cooper sighed, as if she didn't like her conclusion any better than he did, while House dug in his pocket for his Vicodin to take the edge of the renewed ache in his leg and under his diaphragm.

"I'd apologise," Cooper said, "But past experience speaks for itself." She eyed the pill bottle. "And that, of course. You're high."

House glanced at the white tablets cupped in his palm and over to the almost empty wine bottle at her elbow. It was the one Wilson had bought in the service station.

"You're drunk," he rejoined and threw the pills into his mouth.

Cooper shrugged, taking that with disarming grace, and stood, tucking a laser pointer into a breast pocket, which was faintly blue along the edges from leaks or lidless pens.

"We should go home. Kit's going to hang on and get our paperwork straightened out so that Schaeffer never has to know that we went about this ass-backwards. He'll probably crash here in the on-call room, just in case. If there are any complications neither one of us wants to be doing medieval surgery on the kitchen table over a white carpet. I'm going to grab a cab; you're welcome to share."

House levered himself to his feet, glancing down at the file unseeing while he thought of the Wilson-shaped heap curled alone under the flimsy covers. The Ottoman beckoned.

"I'll stay."

Cooper looked at him oddly, a slight contortion of her lips accompanying a headshake.

"Let me rephrase that," she said, catching his eye again and holding it with a nerve that most of House's own staff didn't have. "You and I are going to go to the flat now. We'll come back first thing in the morning. I'm sorry," she continued, as House opened his mouth to laugh in her face. "Until Wilson can tell us who did this to him, I can't let you stay here overnight."

The brief, significant drift of her eyes to the security guard, who was patrolling the corridor outside made her point quite clear. The urge to laugh shrivelled up in House's belly, replaced by that deadening sense of defeat that wanted to be anger and was too damn wounded to make it. Never one with a high capacity for emotion, he felt the worst of it simply run into the abyss of angry hurt somewhere where his heart ought to be.

"Nice idea of hospitality you have," he snorted, mustering as much antipathy as he could and knowing the dog-tired attempt had neither bite nor bark. "Is this how you usually treat people's friends and family?"

Cooper shrugged again, but this one had all the grace of a broken deckchair.

"You know what they say," she said in a tone that managed to be world-weary rather than condescending. "Ten to one, if there's someone to blame, it's people's nearest and dearest."

Still spiky from the slur, House grunted: "Yeah? Where does that leave you?"

She flinched. A fractional closing of her eyes and a quiver of tension through her shoulders, but it was there.

"Fortunately for me," she said, trying and failing to keep the relief out of her voice. "I'm the physician today. _You're_ the family."

"Whatever."

House surrendered with a trivializing wave of his hand. Wilson could set her straight tomorrow. Some battles got lost in favour of winning the war. He slung the file onto the desk and hoisted his bag onto his shoulder. Following her out of the room, he fell unevenly into step with her along the corridor to the elevators.

"You should probably know," he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, habitually attempting to pilfer control of the difficult situation by diffusing it with humour. "You're now next on my hit list and I'm very creative."

To his surprise, Cooper grinned.

"I'll bet." She had the decency to sound wry as she added: "I'll give you fair warning: my building has a fairly impressive security team. But otherwise…be my guest."

TBC…


	9. Chapter 9

By popular demand, SA - with sincere apologies for the ridiculously long wait! I'll try posting chapters in parts, as I'm mostly doing over at LJ to try to speed up the process - at the moment its hard to get time to write in and around RL, but I promise I'm not giving up on this story. Thanks to everyone who has offered encouragement and nagged me to post! This is for you guys.

**Recap:** In Part Seven Wilson is reassessed at New York Mercy. House is banned from supervising the procedures by the twins he nicknames TweedleDumb and TweedleBitch. He and Cooper square off over Wilson's medical file when she insists she needs to know what happened to him. House finds that he can't quite face up to Wilson's attack. During their conversation, House realizes Cooper has seen Wilson injured and in trouble before…

* * *

Somnolent in the snare of the sedative and lulled by the constant pad of rubber-soled steps along the corridors, nurses trekking, doctors hurrying, cleaners slogging and patients shuffling, Wilson slept soon after he'd been settled into bed. The well-known rhythms of passing feet were more soporific than counting sheep.

But he didn't slumber for long. Hospitals, by night, were not quiet places and, while his private room afforded something more of a sanctuary than a curtained bed on the nearby wards, the level of observation required by his head injury did not.

House woke him first, all badgering belligerence and fit to diagnose a fatality from a prat-fall. Short-fused with shock and the alien gleam of fear in his eyes, he was argumentative and resistant to placation. Exhausted by the effort of disproving the mortuary scenarios concocted by his partner's overactive imagination, Wilson dozed again before House had left his bedside.

Hananda woke him soon after to hold scans of his battered brain waveringly up to the useless glow of a bedside lamp. Wilson squinted with bleary eyes and throbbing temples, more because he knew he should than because he could make sense of them. His slowing blinks smeared the scans into a pale haze that blended with the cyanic blue of the room as Hananda retreated, shutting off the lights. Wilson snoozed again, fitfully. His world became snatches of lucid dreams and fluctuating rags of reality.

_Tacked up against the blaring white rectangles of his light-board, Alicia's scans were incomprehensible. He studied them until the blue-black shapes remained affixed to his retinas when he rested his eyes and racked his brain. Concluding nothing, he stared again until his vision was mist, his head was thunder and the light of the board became—_

—a blazing aurora that burst against the slat blinds. A nurse had intruded on the occupant of the room opposite. Voices chattered between the thresholds, became worried murmurs. The light faded—

—_to the focused spotlights of the lab at Princeton Plainsboro. His most-trusted technician fidgeted before the flow cytometer, one hand fervently looping her royal blue bangs behind ears pierced into shell-shaped sieves._

_"There're no cancer markers, Dr. Wilson. I've done the tests three times now."_

_Wilson rubbed at his frown lines, frustrated. "Run them once again—"_

"—for me," Hananda requested, his penlight weaving and bobbing in front of Wilson's eyes.

Over the kerfuffle of an urgent transfer being jog-trotted down the neurology corridor from the emergency ward, Wilson stumbled his way through the standard orientation test for his own head injury, giving his name, the date and his location. Prompted again, he named presidents, prime numbers, recalled strings of simple objects, answered questions so normal they seemed surreal, property of the strange twilight zone that had subsumed his waking world. The dreams felt saner in comparison; he sunk deeper into their thrall, retreating from the labours of the old man in the room next door heaving himself out of bed to plod in his rustling gown with his clop-clopping cane to pee and flush and—

—_Wilson let himself out of the disabled bathroom on the third floor and returned to the head of department's office to patiently peruse the photographs he studied without seeing on what had become a monthly basis. On the wall to the left of the desk, between the coat stand and the bonsai tree, a chestnut horse sailed over a water jump as if its next leap would be right out of the photo-frame. _

_Its rider, thirteen years out of the saddle, was perched on the edge of her desk, the silver fingers of a futuristic prosthetic muting her line to the conference call he'd interrupted._

_Dr. Wood closed the file he'd brought to her and shook her head._

_"There's nothing to indicate that this is a psych case, Jim. If you've come full circle to brain again, you need a neurologist."_

New York Mercy's finest clattered through the blinds on cue, stifling a yawn with his fist.

"Sorry for the rigmarole, Jimmy," Hananda apologised, extracting his penlight from the breast pocket of the scrub top he'd slung on over his jeans in place of pyjamas. "Again from the top. Name?"

_"Wilson, for God's sake." Emily Maus shoved Alicia's scans back at him, insulted in front of a gaggle of residents. "This is the second time I've seen these! If you're not happy with Foreman's, Mevinsky's or my answer, then call up those friends of yours at New York Mercy. They've kicked our asses in every national review for the last five years!"_

_He thanked her and took the scans, hitting speed-dial on his cell as he turned away._

A phone shrilled and shrilled at the reception desk, unanswered. It rang off.

_"You're through to Drs. Hananda-Cooper. We're unavailable at the moment. Please leave your name, number and message after the pip."_

_"Meg, Kit, it's Jim Wilson—"_

"Date of birth?"

"August fourteenth—huh?"

"Jim, it's Kit." A penlight jiggled anxiously in front of his eyes. "Are you with me? D'you know where you are?"

Next door, the old man laboured up to pee again.

Orientated, Wilson realised: "New York Mercy?"

"Yeah," Kit affirmed reassuringly. "Well done. Try to sleep again, you need—"

_"—some rest, Dr. Wilson. You should go home." The night technician in the Princeton lab hovered concernedly at his elbow. "We can do this for you."_

_"I've got it, thanks Sara." _

_Ignoring the perplexed overnight staff realigning the noses his presence had put firmly out of joint, Wilson bent over the microscope, checking and rechecking blood panels and biopsy slides in that state of hyper-focus known to sleep-starved medical professionals worldwide_._ He stared at the shapes and colours forming beneath the lens until they swam together into a meaningless murk._

_What the hell was wrong with this kid?_ _What was he missing?_

_Abandoning the labs for someone else to clear away his equipment, Wilson paced the Oncology corridors, habitually checking patients and exchanging polite nothings with his staff, whilst he waited for the twins to return his phone call. He'd left two messages and spoken to their secretary, but they were wrist deep in plotting and preparing a standstill operation, they'd call back. _

_He returned to his office and stood at his desk, palms pressed to the wood, pouring over Alicia's file until his head pounded. He shifted his weight and reached to turn a page, but a shock of pain jolted down his right arm and he knocked the file to the floor with a clap-clatter. Startled, he stared at the spread-eagled pages—_

"Sorry."

Hananda crouched to pick up the clipboard he'd fumbled and retrieve his penlight from under the Ottoman. His tawny skin was bruised with tiredness, his scrub top crumpled with the restive motions of a light sleep anticipating the hourly summons of an alarm. He circled the bed, checking machines, scribbling notes to himself on the chart—

—_Wilson reviewed his own annotations to his case file, reflexively twirling his pen on the edge of the nearest surface. His thoughts revolved in time to the cylindrical case circling between his fingers. Night after night he'd been sat like this, going over and over and over Alicia's file in his office, exhaustion and concentration narrowing his focus down to the pale rectangles of the pages and the logic versus luck championship snap game of matching symptoms, diagnosis and treatment plans going on in his mind. Beyond that everything had become a cyclorama of irrelevant fog, the hospital, his colleagues, his office…_

He wasn't _in_ his office. The hard wood beneath his palm wasn't wood at all. It was stiff and rubbery…an orthopaedic mattress, its fluid-resistant cover crinkling audibly beneath starched sheets. The light was wrong too. It didn't fall in those reaching rectangles of early sun through his balcony windows; it buzzed from strips beyond a glass sliding door, forging through slat blinds to land in hard narrow bars across the floor. The hum of his overheated computer, grumbling on standby, became the chug of infusion pumps and the bleeps of a multifunction monitor, picking up as it measured waking respiration, blood pressure and heart rate.

_Alicia._ _Damnit._ He must've fallen asleep in her room.

Automatically, he tried to check her stats; but the nearby LCD monitor was blurry. He pushed his pen aside to his sleep-sticky eyes. The pen followed. Tap-tap against his knuckles, it hovered in mid-air. Confused, he batted at it and something tugged in the back of his left hand, angular and sharp. He winced and splayed his fingers to peer down at them. The faint shadows in the dimness were nondescript. An unexpected weight drooped his forefinger toward his palm. He curled his fist and felt the blocky outline of an oximeter, the slow twine of a plastic tube around his wrist. Not a pen. An IV wire. Wilson blinked and came further awake, stared at the chirping monitor to which he was hitched. _He_ was a patient?

"Jim?"

Of _course_, he was the patient. Recoiling from a looming wave of memories, Wilson murmured some sort of reply to Hananda.

"Once more and I'll let you sleep for a few hours," his friend promised gently.

The questions came in place of the consult that never had. Satisfied, Hananda closed his file and—

_Alicia's mocked Wilson from the muzzy miasma of his sedated consciousness. What was he missing? What symptom? What treatment regime that would stall the disease until he could pin it down? It was cancer. It had to be. But _what_ cancer?_

_He'd asked everyone in his department. Run laps of the hospital requesting consults. Called up state to New York and down to Trenton again. Were it not for a stinging sacrilegious rebuke about Christological complexes compensating for crappy, second-rate doctoring, he'd've hammered on the wall and gate crashed House with his case instead of the other way around for once. But he'd be damned if he'd go and grovel to a glorified GP…_

_Which House _wasn't_. And Wilson _knew_ he wasn't. And it didn't make a damn bit easier to take it on the chin when he'd been jibed all of yesterday about going freelance as a hippy quack if he thought he could heal with love instead of medicine. To needle his pride all the more, Wilson couldn't even remember what had started that bickering match or whether House had just been taking his snark out for its evening walk. Probably it had been something innocuous, like a way to avoid doing dishes._

_Sighing, Wilson let his awareness condense upon that wad of pages, which lay spread open on a shelf of mist. He reached for it for the umpteenth time – and startled back, his fist closing on empty air. _

_It wasn't a file at all. It was a tiny body. The sternum was peeled apart like open pages. The skin was white and blank, bloodless. He was in the mogure, surrounded by the scattered and useless tools of his trade, scalpels, scopes, jars, tags and charts. There was nothing that he could do with them. There were no organs. From the body cavity arose a faint mist._

_Shit._ _She was dead._

_Wilson gaped at the rigid, glassy-eyed girl in bewilderment._

_How in the hell was he going to tell her...?_

_Mother. _

_Tania powered in, trailing IV wires like something Frankenstein had awoken. Caught unawares, Wilson nonetheless realised at once that she was dead. Foggy tears streaked her cheeks. The hems, cuffs and collar of her backless hospital gown oozed white smoke. She was disintegrating in front of his eyes. _

_Even so, he tried to shield her from the sight on the table. Whether mom or mist-swaddled mummy, she shouldn't see her little girl this way: laid out on a slab her body bent back like a broken butterfly's wings, staring sightlessly at the ceiling with cyanotic lips lax over gappy teeth._

_Tania's face creased with a soul-wrenching distress. Her voice billowed out in soundless pallid clouds that became skywriting scribbled in the chill air._

_"You told me you'd do everything you could!"_

_Wilson tried to speak, but the bespoke words he could always conjure at a moment like this caught in the back of his throat. His voice came out hoarse, an unpalatable croak._

_"I did. I'm so sorry. There was nothing I could do."_

_"Liar!"_

_Her fist sent him reeling. He staggered into the autopsy table and struck his head on a jar. It overturned, slopping preserving fluid across his face._

_"You lied to me!"_

_Another blow. Another and another. He tried to grasp her wrists, but she contorted like an acrobat and a kick sent him crashing to his knees. She was inhumanly strong._

_She hit him again and again, one corpse beating him over another, hell bent upon making him a third. Mist rained down from her, tinged pink with his spraying blood. _

_"You __**killed**__ her!"_

_I didn't. Damnit. I _didn't…mean to?

_"Mrs. Walker, please listen to me. There was nothing that I could—"_

_"Shut up."_

_This voice came from behind. Wilson flung a startled glance over his shoulder. On either side the mist took shape, clumped wetly together into Lindsey and Keith. They circled the autopsy table, seized his arms and twisted, trapped him on his knees. _

_Tania came closer, close enough that more wet mist moulted off her to spatter on Wilson's face, sizzling like sweat. Lindsey leaned over his shoulder and breathed words into her ear. He saw them materialise in Tania's glassy eyes._

_"I've got an idea."_

_Her grin was a rictus mask._

_Kneeling, Tania touched fuliginous fingertips to Wilson's swelling cheek. Her thumb smoothed over his lips, down the vulnerable line of his hiccupping carotid and on, over his torso, lightly exploring her marbling handiwork. A sensory murmur snaked through him, aroused by this sudden soothing delicacy after the blows. His mind blanked out in shock and disbelief._

_She smiled and her hand slunk between the folds of the labcoat he was somehow no longer wearing. It lay on the floor, just visible inside his peripheries: a pale splatter of white. Lindsey's hold tightened on his arm as Keith shifted, pressed his hot, hard body claustrophobically along Wilson's back. _No. Oh please, no_._

_**No.**_

_Not yet waking, Wilson became aware of himself in the dream. Aware of where it was wrong, impossible, right. He was helpless to change any of it. At the time, he'd vowed that he wouldn't struggle. In the dream, he could not. Held down on all sides, he was also bound within a body that was entirely indifferent to his will. He was at once paralysed and reactive in ways that rocked him to his core. The feeling terrified him with its new familiarity_.

_"I died,"_ _Tania announced, petting him with sweltering effectiveness. "But you __**killed **__her."_

_"And now," Lindsey murmured from his left. "Doctor Wilson, you're going to make it all better."_

_Keith pressed in closer, hooked his chin over Wilson's shoulder, an oppressive, invasive parody of an embrace. Wilson collected cries in his throat and choked them down. He opened his mouth to speak, to reason, bargain, beg; but all that spewed out was mist. Tania laughed at him, worked harder. He shut up, breathing fast, and twitched in her grip, fighting the untimely rise of a smaller death. _

_It rose anyway. Behind him, the table rattled tinnily. Flesh squeaked on steel. Fusty breath puffed into his ear as Alicia scrambled off the table and dropped soundlessly onto bare feet, padding around in front of him to stand with the flaps of her Y-incision waggling open like a ruined hospital gown. She peered curiously at what her mother was doing, with all the innocent inquisitiveness of one investigating a worm meandering in the dirt of her back yard. Wilson went light-headed with revulsion. But his body didn't – couldn't – care. _

_"You're a liar," Alicia agreed, contemplating him with child-like solemnity. Her words whistled through the gap where a milk tooth had come out. "You said you were going to look after me. But you didn't. You killed me."_

_From between the obscenely parted strips of papery flesh where her ribs should be, she produced a syringe and, with extra-specially methodical care, siphoned out a measure of the mist inside her. It swelled in the syringe, bulging from plunger to tip. Alicia held it erect, pointed up toward the light. Her bluish tongue poking out of one corner of her mouth, she depressed the plunger a little to push out the excess air. Mist bulged at the needle's tip, like a speech bubble. _

_Her soft voice seemed to emerge from it, juvenile and cruelly gentle. _

_"Your turn."_

_Wilson's breath sped; his pulse began to boil frenetically. His head was thumped so hard he thought it would explode._

_"Or," a deep, amused voice interrupted from nearby. "You could do it the easy way."_

_The morgue table rattled once more and an unmistakable plonk-step circumnavigated Wilson's captors to bring an all too familiar figure to stand, fatherly, at Alicia's side. Cane in one hand, cafeteria coffee cup in the other, House exchanged his stick for the child's syringe and folded his own fingers around the plunger. _

_Heart, body and brain racing, Wilson watched in disbelief as the syringe was slowly emptied into the coffee cup. Mist steamed from the rim and disappeared seamless into the swirling black contents. House handed the cup off to Tania, nodded once to Wilson, and retrieved his cane, limping away into the mist. _

_Wilson had a split second to realise what he'd done and what else was in the cup._

_It wasn't coffee._

_It was words._

His_ words._

_Then Tania crammed them down his throat._

He came awake vomiting, amidst a crowd. Lights were on everywhere, yellow-white and loud. Hands were holding him down. He thrashed frantically and someone shrieked for more sedative. _No!_ He couldn't speak for the convulsions that bent him double and heaved his guts into his throat. Someone else shouted it for him and he stopped trying to holler bile. Most of the hands relented and, for several minutes after, he was so engulfed in sickness and pain that he no longer cared what else happened. A ludicrous thought erupted with the next round of puking:_ so much for the anti-emetic._

Only once the worst had subsided, could Wilson raise his head to wish the cluster of nurses away and realise that they had already gone. There was only Hananda, holding an emesis basin in one hand, the other supporting him with a gentle grasp on his left shoulder. Wilson glanced at him, but dared not say a word in case too many came up all at once. He concentrated on the acidic taste of vomit, so strong that it made him drool. Instead of speaking, he sought to rid himself of the taste of puke and futility. He expectorated with ever increasing disgust.

When he was finally done, Hananda took away the basin with the tight smile of one who struggles not to retch when other people do. While his back was turned, Wilson sequestered himself amidst a huddle of covers, feeling anxiously around beneath them for any tangible evidence of his dream. His clothes were soaked in sweat, but that was all. He sagged against the pillows, weak with relief.

Hananda handed the brimming cardboard basin off to a nurse at the door, returning with a cup of mouthwash and an empty one into which to cough up. Wilson rinsed his mouth repeatedly, thankful. Tossing those into the trash too, Hananda poured him a drink of water from the jug on the nightstand and stood quietly beside the bed, helping Wilson sip from it. His good hand wouldn't co-operate; it trembled like a Parkinson's sufferer's. He lowered the cup to brace the base against his thigh and studied the breath patterns he'd made on the rim of the translucent plastic. The faint fog was fading away.

"How you doing?" Hananda asked, after a few moments, his voice normal enough for Wilson not to feel too foolish.

He didn't want to answer, all the same. Didn't want to sully his mouth with the bitter, abrasive burn of more useless words. But Hananda was waiting, worrying. Wilson closed his eyes and, almost without moving his lips, muttered:

"Better now."

He'd carried a lot of lies in his lifetime. Every time he thought he couldn't stomach any more, he was wrong.

Hananda said nothing. The hand that had been resting on Wilson's shoulder tightened briefly. Hananda's fingers were bony, the skin papery from bouts of self-inflicted malnutrition. The silent squeeze felt akin to a secret handshake. An invite from the survivors' club. Wilson didn't know if he belonged. But he was glad that Hananda didn't let go.

"I need to check you over," his friend said at length, shifting around to stand not at Wilson's shoulder but in his sightline.

Wilson bit the inside of his lips and inched his head from side to side, flinching at the oppressive ache.

"It's not—that wasn't—" he got out between his teeth, stopped as he wondered what the point was of talking. This would happen anyway. He had no power in this hospital, not even the illusion he'd had at home. He took a breath and tried again, persistent as an addict. "It wasn't the head injury, not that time."

"I know." Hananda did. Of course he did. He had more nightmares than Wilson and he worked in the profession that had caused them. Gently, neutrally, he asked: "Do you want to talk about it?"

The nightmare was far too vivid. Not to mention half-nonsensical. Among the half a hundred other details that were simply unreal in the phantasmagoria his subconscious had cooked up, Tania had never said a cruel world to him. By the time she'd reached Princeton, she'd been completely spent.

"A world of no."

Not knowing where he'd start – or how he would stop – Wilson shook his head. The room immediately fell apart into fulgent fragments. Fulgurate aches blossomed in his ears, brow, eyes, and nose, even his teeth throbbed as sharp corners and blocks of the agony inside his skull dug in everywhere. The rasp of his hair fluttering against his scalp was so loud he didn't hear himself groan.

Hananda moved away and shut off the overhead lights, restoring the room to a tolerable dusk. He returned to the bed and said firmly:

"Then I must check you over. It's almost time again."

The last line had an echo to it that made Hananda frown. If Wilson had been aware of anything but the fishbowl distortions of the room resettling its scuttling architecture, he'd have realised that it was the same line that had always heralded the next childhood field trip to the research lab in Josiah Cooper's basement. He wasn't aware. He tipped his chin slowly down toward his chest in mute concession and let Hananda get on with it.

Still frowning, the neurologist made quick work with the penlight. Then, almost casually, he sat down on the edge of Wilson's bed to rattle through the questions. The ritual served as a salt circle; their succinct back and forth warded off the renewed summons of the sandman. Wilson knew now that that was where the vaporous space had come from. It was one of the sandman's desert-like domains; he'd been a guest of the sedative still cycling through his veins. He still couldn't discern the meaning of the miasma. If it had one. He shivered and pulled the blankets up higher, gave Hanada's questions more focus than they required.

"Full name?"

"James Evan Wilson."

"Date?"

"September 13th 2008. Saturday."

"Do you know where you are?"

"New York Mercy."

"Good. Now." Hananda leaned closer, his narrow, prominent features smudging as a pale glaze veiled Wilson's eyes despite his efforts to stay awake. "Which criminally soppy pop song request did you succumb to on your first wedding's playlist?"

Wilson blinked and his vision cleared; he sought refuge in momentary confusion. Sluggishly comprehending the question as one intended to test long-term memory, he felt his lips search for a semblance of a smile.

"Was there only _one_?"

Hananda's soft chuckle vibrated against his leg; it held the uneasy timbre of relief.

"Okay. _Pick_ one."

He hardly had to think.

"Do I get points for irony for allowing _Lay All Your Love on Me_?"

Hananda marked his chart and nodded.

"Good call. Of course, if I thought you _had_ taken life lessons from ABBA I'd be scheduling you immediately for surgery."

Wilson snuffed drowsily. There should be a joke, somewhere, he thought. Divorces. Pink Casts. Ringtones. It would be at his own expense, of course. His eyes sought the Ottoman, House. But, except for a folded hospital-issue brown blanket and unused pillow, the chair was empty. House wasn't there.

_Of course he wasn't,_ Wilson thought, irritated with himself. Prying, investigating, doctoring and deconstructing House could do. Bedside vigils and handholding were not his forte. He'd maxed himself out on whatever compassion he'd borrowed last night and he hadn't fit too well anyway. If he'd been there, he'd've been commandeering the penlight and question time and…Wilson would feel better.

Or worse.

Abruptly, he shunted the water cup back into Hananda's hands, knowing as he did so that, of all his friends, Hananda would never, _ever_, be one to spike his drink. He rubbed the hip House had injected, nonetheless, searching for new sore spots.

Hananda glanced behind him to set the cup down on the cabinet, then eyed him pensively for a few seconds.

"Jimmy," he said, closing the chart and laying it beside the glass. "I'm finished for now." He gestured to the Ottoman. "D'you want me to stay with you?"

A dozen sensible, reassuring, refusals reared in Wilson's throat. But they disintegrated into so much mist on the tip of his tongue. In the end, he simply nodded.

TBC…


	10. Chapter 10

**Part B:**

A loud knock woke House in the guest room of apartment 8A. His first deep breath tore out of him in a harsh gasp. He groaned, scrambling to get out of the recovery position. Despite the sour gritty residue of vomit and charcoal that hit the back of his throat as he wheezed, lips sealed white to check a groan, he groped urgently across the crumpled red coverlet for his Vicodin.

His hand encountered several unfamiliar bottles. There was slightly cloudy sports drink in a dubious shade of lime; a handwritten sticky label was affixed to the side indicating that it contained a 70 mg/kg oral dose of N-acetylcysteine to counter liver damage. Beside it were the glass vials of Kenalog and lidocaine he'd been prescribed last night and, rattling around in solitary amber plastic confinement, a single Vico_profen_. There was also a tab of aspirin. Ignoring the second intrusive knock, House dosed himself in swearing, grudging relief. _Thank you, Wilson, for collecting fucked-up friends. _There were certain advantages of crashing with a medic who was also a fellow addict.

Pages peeled off his face and fluttered down onto the bedding as he sat up, rubbing instinctively at the spastic objections of his right thigh. The safely stowed remains of a home blood draw kit had been left amidst the paper piles that had precipitated its necessity: a stark reminder that he would be no good to Wilson if he continued sucking back his pills in conscious disregard for their high acetaminophen content. He shoved aside the paraphernalia and rescanned the printouts of Walker and Granville's medical files.

The black type, slightly smudged where it had adhered to his cheek, confirmed once again two full and recent sets of STD panels. The results were a little over a week old. They'd been taken when Walker donated sperm to assist his sister-in-law's latest attempt to conceive. _Let's hear it for keeping it in the family._ Venting a hard breath, House let the pages fall as a third sharp rap heralded the peremptory opening of the door.

The click-shuffle of crutches inched over the threshold and a man limped in, his right knee encased in a hinged orthapaedic brace. Anterior cruciate rupture, post very recent surgery; the diagnosis was automatic. House scrubbed a hand over his face, belatedly processing the hard muscular lines of a vigorous athlete, the scruffy pale fuzz along a square jaw-line and sleep-ruffled ash-blonde hair outgrowing a crew cut. A pair of grey sweat pants, the right leg rucked up high over the brace, were slung low on narrow hips. The intruder moved his right crutch awkwardly, hampered by the white cordless phone in his hand.

"Greg House?"

The unapologetic wake-up identified a fellow military brat. Grey-blue eyes swept briefly from House's face, over the drugs, to the puke bucket by the side of the bed and back again, with neither surprise nor judgement.

"Ben Chamberlain. We met last night. It's zero seven hundred hours and I've got a Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the phone for you. She said she doesn't care if you're in a coma and, or, a ditch: put your cell back on and wake up."

Ben shifted the both crutches into his left hand and slung the phone from the doorway. It landed on the bed beside House's knee. Cuddy was squawking on the other end before the door had closed again.

House didn't bother to pick up. He hit the end call button, snapped the back off and removed the batteries. He dropped the phone on the floor and went back to staring at the results of Wilson's assailants' STD panels.

* * *

A soft humming roused Wilson. For the second time, he awoke with the disorientated expectation of having nodded off at his patient's bedside in Princeton Plainsboro. But the effects of the sedative were fading and, before he'd even opened his eyes, he'd processed that the wordless melody was neither tuneless nor the same four bars repeated _ad infinitum_ in the riveted tone-deaf manner of Lew the Janitor. He lifted heavy lids and sought Hananda, napping on the Ottoman.

He jolted awake upon discovering Cooper. She lay in the spot her brother had occupied, upside down; her head rested on the seat, her legs stretched up the back. She stopped humming as Wilson stirred and glanced toward him under the sheaf of progress notes she was holding in the air above her nose.

"Evening."

"Uh…" Adjusting the lie of his scratchy blankets in a reflexive - _pathetic_, _paranoid_ – need to cover himself up, Wilson masked his fussing with a glance at his watch. But beneath its fresh cobweb of cracks its analogue dial uselessly showed half past nine. "Is it?"

Beyond her, the intermittent passing of nurses in calamine scrubs and the chiaroscuro illumination of the corridor offered no indication of whether it was night or morning; he didn't spend enough time at NYMH to tell the hours from its routines.

"Nah." Cooper lowered the notes and swung her feet down from where they'd been hooked over the headrest so that she could sit up. "You've only been asleep a couple more hours."

"Oh-kay."

Wilson's breath snagged in his throat as she moved, before logic overcame his irrational anxiety. It had been a long time since he'd had genuine cause to be ill at ease around her; he didn't much care to revisit it.

He sucked in a steadying hit of oxygen through his cannula and added: "Good."

Cooper nodded and, following the aimless downward drift of his eyes, automatically began to reorder her rumpled clothes. A pair of black jeans that had been ruched up around her knees settled into crisp, flared lines over low-heeled, tasselled, suede loafers and she resettled the front of her violet angora cowl-neck tunic, tidying away an errant bra strap. She'd obviously been home, though she seemed to have done no more than change and splash water on her face. The remnants of yesterday's eyeliner were smeared in dull crescents beneath her eyes.

Wilson rubbed his good hand over his own in involuntary empathy with her visible fatigue.

"Have you been here long?"

"A while." She stifled a yawn, then gestured imprecisely toward the door with his progress notes. "Came in to give Kit a break a few hours ago. I didn't sleep."

Smothering an inevitable yawn of his own – an effort that made his bruised jaw ache – Wilson nodded, unsurprised. Tattling lines clustered around Cooper's mouth and brow, etching qualms and questions across her features. He'd seen that look on her often enough at med school. He and Hananda had slumped together on countless bunks in innumerable on-call rooms, on the verge of passing out over their textbooks, while she sat bolt upright, stalking radical and complex theories.

"Apparently I was the only one." Another loose wave of his notes gestured to an elsewhere that encompassed a several block radius. "Kit's in the on-call room catching zees and El Champino's passed out in the guest bedroom at the flat. I'm sure they'll both join us soon enough."

She sounded mildly put out, though Wilson couldn't guess why.

"Mmhm. There's this new-fangled concept people are trying," he mumbled. "'S called sleep."

As if on cue, his eyelids slipped to half-mast. It took most of his strength to heave them up again. Sedative or no sedative, he felt as weak and dozy as neonate.

"I've heard of it," Cooper replied dryly. "Requires skulling two soporifics and a bottle of scotch and it helps not to have anywhere to be the next morning."

It was testament to their friendship that she _hadn't_ knocked herself out and left her brother to handle the early shift, though it wasn't what had been arranged last night. Wilson wrinkled his nose, which itched where the cannula chafed his philtrum, and peered at her. Yesterday, she'd been taken unawares by his injuries and, antagonised by House at every turn, become ansty and quick to act. It was her way, to fix first and explain later; but, with his ability to trust so recently shattered it was sharp enough to shred his rationality, Wilson had ricocheted away from her. This morning, she seemed reticent and introspective. In spite of the litany of aches making their plangent presence known, he was curious and a little concerned.

"Are you okay?"

"That depends." She turned her sagacious scrutiny on him. "How're you?"

Without thinking, Wilson glanced at the monitors, making Cooper snicker under her breath. He summoned a weary, sheepish smile at his own lingering stupefaction and shrugged one-sidedly.

"I'm okay."

Cooper propped her chin on her fist, puck-like, and eyeballed him.

"If I lean over and poke you, am I going to hear you squeak?"

If she so much as moved, she was going to find him clinging to the ceiling. Wilson quickly lifted his left hand in an apotropaic gesture.

"You know, one day I'm going to find myself some nicer friends," he said, affecting a put upon expression that softened her inquisitorial stare into mere inquiry. "Meg, I hurt and I'm exhausted. Apart from that, I'm—"

He started to consider it and swiftly stopped. Beneath the sedative's lethargic legacy his nerves threatened to noose themselves into twitching knots. He shoved the sensation down with a whole host of emotions that he didn't want to think about and flexed his mangled masculinity instead:

"I'm not as think as you concussed I am."

It wasn't conscious, let alone deliberate but, as Cooper arched an incredulous eyebrow, he realised how flirtatious he'd sounded.

"Why, Jimmy!" Somewhere between impressed and amused at his attempt to assume normality, she shot him a coquettish glance from under her curly lashes. "You do make the drip look undeniably sexy, but if you really want to start rocking the on-call room again, you've got to be offering me at least a surgery."

A faint warmth tugged at his chest as Wilson felt the beginnings of a real smile stir. He gathered up the edge of his blanket in the stiff fingers of his right hand, as if to flick his covers back, though he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.

"Well. What're we waiting for? Let's go!"

Their eyes caught, gleaming, remembering their med school days, swapping sex for study opportunities in playful trade-offs. Cooper laughed first, clear and easy. Wilson grinned with her, then grimaced as his jaw and side registered throbbing protests.

"Hoh! _Ouch._ Don't make me laugh!"

Inside, the warmth in his chest rolled southwards undaunted. His skin tingled as it recalled: _the feel of delicate turquoise satin and black lace, ochre skin and corkscrew curls; the gentle crash into pillows that smelled of starch and Lysol; and, that one fateful night, the sudden disorientating head-rush as brutal arms wrenched him away_—

Wilson went cold, his grin freezing in a frigid parody of his former mirth. Cooper missed it, covering her eyes with her hand as colour leapt in bright splashes to her cheeks. She shook her head, still smiling.

"You started it, Chachi."

Her mirth too faded abruptly and she reached down beside the Ottoman to pick up a decorative cream metallic can that looked as though it should have held soda. Bubbles tinkled lightly against the aluminium as she took a long pull from it and stared at him, growing sober herself. Metaphorically.

"You scared me."

"I'm sorry—" Wilson started, not certain whether he was apologising for yesterday's fright or the one from years before.

Cooper cut him off with a shake of her head, swift enough that he wondered if she were remembering that one too.

"Don't apologise. You _always_ apologise." She drummed her fingers testily on the can and he caught a glimpse of the intricate branding through her fingers. Sparkling Chardonnay. It didn't explain the next sentence. "Talk to me: rabid cheerleaders?"

He blinked and half-glanced at his IV, wondering if he was on something he didn't know about. It took a minute for comprehension to dawn.

"House." A rumble of annoyance percolated in Wilson's throat. "Is that what he told you?"

Cooper shrugged an acknowledgement.

"It was one of a number of tall tales. There was also some _Lord of the Flies_ riff about your cancer kiddies." She chewed her lip and corrected herself. "Actually, he said patients."

Wilson dodged her questioning look. Experience had taught him that, sooner or later, House would figure out what had happened. He would poke and pry and theorise, hack computer systems, search homes, and ram-raid Wilson's psyche until he found out what had been done to him, what _he'd_ done and what he _hadn't_ done. What Wilson would do then, he couldn't imagine, couldn't bear to consider how House might respond. It was all he could cope with at present to know that House would _know_. But Cooper…it was appalling how tempted he was to confide in her.

She'd been there, after all, intimately tangled in the bad judgements, intoxication, and stuttered statements the last time he'd got some all too personal attention from the cops and an EMT crew. It had not been quite like this, not really at all, when it came down to the raw details. There wasn't any heart-stopping sense of déjà vu. But there could be. Soon, if he gave Tania's family any reason to make good on their threat. And there was so much more that could be damaged than a few bones, his body and his pride.

Resolutely, he shouldered his predicament and kept it to himself.

"Speaking of issues with patients," Cooper ventured, giving up on his prolonged silence. "I owe you an apology."

"Ohh…kay."

Puzzled, Wilson shifted against the pillows and raised himself awkwardly on his left elbow. Cooper, in turn, retreated behind a lowered brow and her gaze skulked downward to settle on the can in her lap.

"I was an ass last night," she told him, her thumb fretting over the ring pull with a tinny sequence of unsettled clicks. "I should've let Kit take point sooner. It…I'm not… I can't treat people I'm close to. Not after what happened to my brother and I. I always think I can – that I _should_ be able – but I'm not good at it, not good for the patient. I never explain. I just _do_, like I used to before I knew _what_ I was doing, just following my foster father's directions, fixing Kit up after one of Jed's damned experiments."

She sighed, fitting her thumbnail into the ring pull's groove.

"I did the same to you and I upset you—"

Wilson winced as his dramatic reaction outside the CT lab came back to him. He'd sworn at her, struck out with his good arm in such a vehement appel that she'd had to grab him to avoid being hit. He'd clammed up at once, apologising and reproaching her through shallow pants. _Damnit, Meg, damnit. What are you doing? What do you _want_ from me? _In his defensive distress, it hadn't mattered that he'd given his consent for the tests. It had only mattered that, even if he insisted, he didn't believe she would allow him to be discharged unmolested.

"I'm sorry," Cooper finished.

"It's okay." Wilson murmured automatically, willing his pulse to settle down again as the monitor peeped troublesomely beside him. "You were doing your job. I should've trusted you. _I'm_ so—"

"Stop_._" Cooper warded off his own apology. "We've been here before, falling over each other with _sorrys_ and _should'ves_." She cast her drink a nasty look and put it on the floor again. "Let's forget it and move on."

Wilson's stomach plummeted, as if he were falling, back twenty years in time to the morning after that awful night.

_He was escorted through trampled balloons and ripped down banners. His shredded shirt billowed in the draft of his limping movement and the cold air coagulated the sticky mess all over his unzipped trousers. His vision was in fragments. There were guns and badges everywhere. By the door, paramedics hovered. In the kitchen, his fiancée, Sam, was in floods of confused tears. Voices came at him from all sides, asking questions he could barely hear over the pounding in his ears, demanding answers. And Cooper, her hair plastered to cheeks whiter than Chase's had been, stared blankly at him as she tried to piece together a statement beside the police van—_

The memory disintegrated as her long dark curls shrank into their current tousled crop and her glazed eyes became hooded, sheltered under her furrowed brow, as if she too had flashed back upon the incident. For a moment, Wilson thought she would bring it up; but her mind had gone elsewhere and she sighed peevishly.

"After thirty odd years, you'd think I'd've got over the lab in the basement and the weekly hands-on how-to demonstrations in doctoring that I got instead of piano lessons or pony rides." She faffed with a tassel on her battered loafers. "Turns out, I'm still not much of a doctor when someone I care about is on the table, hurting." She flicked the tassel ruefully. "And conscious."

Wilson hadn't been the only one who'd calmed down after the dose of lorazepam.

Somewhat relieved, he said reassuringly, "You don't stop being a good doctor, Meg – _or_," before she could object, "a good friend. How is your foster father, by the way?"

She shot him a knowing look, but let him shift the subject away from himself.

"Still alive. He's—" She paused as her pager buzzed twice in quick succession. She pulled it off her waist belt and glanced through the messages, before replacing it, unconcerned. "Flying into LA next month to introduce us as speakers at the annual Clinical Congress of Surgeons. His motor neurone disease has reached the stage where he might as well Fed X us a voice recording rather than haul his chair and computer in from UPenn to show us off. But I probably shouldn't've told him that. Frankenstein's coming just to spite me now." She fixed Wilson with a stare incisive enough to conduct a hands-free autopsy. "I guess you do always hurt the ones you love."

Belatedly he understood why he'd woken to find her there. It knocked the breath out of him in an astonished incoherent exclamation of denial.

"Hoh!" He struggled to hoist himself upright against the pillows. "You think _House_ did this to me?"

Her face twisted with reluctance.

"I—" She hesitated, then took a swig from her can and shrugged decisively. "Look, Jim, you turn up here, like this, without any explanation, have a panic-attack in our lobby and end up hitting your head so hard you have to be admitted. House goes bugfuck whenever you're out of his sight and then spends last night talking rings around me. The only thing that's obvious is that you're both hiding something huge. Frankly, I don't know what to think."

No wonder she'd been guarding his bedside.

"It's not—" Gnawing his lip in a futile attempt to gate out the discomfort, Wilson heaved himself higher on the pillows and strived to look less downtrodden and dejected than he felt. "This isn't—"

He couldn't quite prevent himself from wavering over the words.

"It's not—it isn't House's fault. He wasn't…responsible for any of this." He wiggled his head stubbornly and tried again. "And he wasn't making up stories."

"About the cheerleaders?"

"About the patients."

Cooper scrutinised him sceptically. "Is that so? Or, now that you've had time to think it over, that's the most plausible excuse?"

Wilson sighed, lightly pinching the bridge of his tender nose. He reminded himself that it had taken her years to believe that Kit's partner, Ben, had no ulterior motives. Neither of the twins was exactly credulous. Jed's, ultimately successful, quest to become one of the foremost medical researchers had done a hell of a number on both of them.

"House hasn't been trying to conduct revivification studies on me," Wilson reproached, half in jest and, this time, all in seriousness.

Cooper tossed her head, as if she didn't believe him. Standing so quickly that Wilson's heart hit the back of his throat she tromped across the room to sling her empty can into the trash under the sink.

"You can joke about it all you like," she said, swinging around on her heel to pin him to his pillow with a penetrating stare. "But in case you haven't noticed a pattern over the last ten years, you've come running to us every time something bad goes down in Princeton. It's not that I mind, but I _have _noticed: House is _always_ at the centre of it. Twelve months ago: the bus crash, where your girlfriend – Amber – died. Two years ago: that narcotics bust, when you called me from the middle of nowhere one Christmas Eve, because he'd done something stupid in his apartment. Two years before that you called to say you'd been forced to resign your post at Princeton, because of some stand off between House and that overweight, overbearing suit who was playing Chairman of the Board. You two keep breaking up and getting back together and it's more and more fraught every time."

Her face contorted grimly as she churned on, dredging up more of the past, as if Wilson hadn't been there the first time around.

"Until House turned up, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times you got that frazzled about anything." Before he could protest, she listed them with unerring accuracy. "Sam Carr. Your brother Danny. And that damned party."

The night loomed between them again, all shattered glass, spilt booze, and unforgettable misjudgements. Wilson shivered in a febrile flood of shame.

"Graduation day." A white static filled his head and he found himself saying numbly: "So you do remember—"

"Remember _what?_" Cooper curtailed him, jaw jutting, eyes darkening, all denial there was anything _to_ remember.

She had so many unpleasant experiences in her past to drown every day and doubly so whenever she utilised one of the new procedures or experimental treatments that had put the twins on the map as neurosurgeons. By one-sided accord, they'd never spoken of the one they shared. Wilson subsided into his lonely silence and shuffled his head back and forth.

"Nothing."

Cooper let out a pent-up breath that sank heavily through the stifled quiet.

"Remember what?" she retracted, so softly it could be passed off as another sigh.

Wilson pondered her sidelong. Standing between two stripes of light falling in from the corridor, her face was flanked by shadows and he doubted the validity of her offer. The tip of his tongue unconsciously fretted with a stinging split where his lower lip had been driven into his teeth by a punch, while he searched for some thing, some _reason_, that would be good enough to pursue the subject. But what he wanted from her abstruse, even to himself. Absolution? Castigation? Some indication that he was caught up in a warped karmic game of Consequences?

Cooper didn't wait for him to decide.

"Do I remember what?" she repeated, direct now, her tone dust-dry and determinedly devoid of emotion. "The catalogue of mistakes that were made that night? The part where you cheated on your crippled fiancée? The part where a good friend set you up? Where the 911 services crashed the party? How what they found nearly ended up in court? Or the part where, to keep that from happening, we lied to police?"

The static in Wilson's brain grew louder, threatened to tunnel his vision into confined spaces and menacing faces. With an effort, he wrested his attention to his own ghostly reflection, trapped in the glass doors between the bars of the blinds. Cooper's image was superimposed over the corridor there too. He searched her translucent visage again for blame or accusation. But it was set in the implacable lines she wore whenever anyone questioned why she had never reported Jed for his _kids are for experiments, not just for fostering_ approach to parenthood; it was pure _faire et se taire_ mentality and utterly impenetrable.

"So you do remember," he murmured at last, half surprised when the words did not form soundless clouds in the air before him. "You—you always said you were too drunk…"

Cooper harrumphed candidly. "There're a lot of things in my past that I'd like to have been too drunk to remember."

She weaved away from the door and circled the foot of his bed, returning to the Ottoman. Stooping briefly, she picked up her ever-present bottle of water and snapped open the sports cap to suckle on the dispenser, contrarily impelled to dilute the levels of alcohol in her bloodstream. Her pupils had grown huge as she returned to the darkest patches of the room; the shadows stole the age lines from her face, falsified a youth she'd never really had.

"Jim, c'mon," she muttered between slurps, her voice taut and vaguely chastening. "Memories are anchored in the—"

She stopped. Her nostrils flared as if she'd caught a scent; continued slowly at first, then harder, quicker:

"Memories are anchored in their internal contexts. Meaning that if you get someone drunk they usually remember what happened on previous occasions that they were drunk…"

She tailed off, the ellipses burgeoning with realisations. The silence was sudden, somehow breathless.

Wilson's heart skipped two beats, one for himself, one for her. Each caught on first to their own conundrum, then the other's. Then that the other had done the same. His heart resumed a thumping percussion.

A slight shudder passed through Cooper's frame. She shed her history like a skin and drew the water bottle away from her mouth. The soft click as she capped it punctured the pause.

"Why did you bring this up, Jim? How did you get hurt? What did you do?"

The dull-edged dagger of regret twisted its way into Wilson's gut. He contemplated the bulk of his cast, which mounded the covers he'd settled over his abdomen.

"Does it matter? Beyond the fact that it was my own fault?"

Cooper shifted in his periphery, her stance half-challenge, half-guarded, a wary confrontation.

"Was it?"

He couldn't allow himself to think otherwise. It had been his choices, ultimately, that had landed him, blanket-wrapped, amidst a baying circle of cops and paramedics. He raised his chin and said firmly:

"As much as graduation day was. Even you blame me for that." He couldn't meet her eyes; he didn't realise that she would not meet his. He finished quietly, staring at the scuffed toes of her loafers: "You have every right to."

Cooper's feet ticked, as if she would approach him; but she pirouetted away with an unfinished gesticulation that became a loose grasp on the jamb of the bathroom door. When he chanced a look toward her, for affirmation, she was staring at the dully gleaming line of the threshold divide. The pale glow from within etched out her profile, left the nearest side of her face unreadably dark.

"You're breaking the doctors' code," she said flatly, paraphrasing an old adage as if he – or they – were interns once more. "Anyone involved in a situation has a measure of responsibility – and we _don't_ share our feelings afterwards."

He should've known better than to resurrect the subject. He'd got no more out of her than he had the first time he'd tried to find some sort of resolution to the fuck of a mess he'd got her caught up in. But, unlike House, Cooper was of a mind that there were some puzzles it was better to bury than to solve. Wilson sighed tiredly, wondering if that might not be the answer to the question he'd been trying to ask her all along.

"Forget it, then," he waved his hand in an attempt to clear the tension from the air. "What's done is done. I'm just thinking out loud."

Cooper blew air through her teeth and, forgoing the Ottoman, subsided easily onto the edge of his bed.

"Less of that," she advised gently, gesturing to the saggy shapes of the emptying boluses strung on a steel stand to his left, glowing in translucent traffic-light colours where the phosphorescence from the LCD screen caught them. "You have a concussion, Jim. You're not going to be thinking straight."

Half-heartedly, Wilson deflected still further from their former topic: "Now that House _is _responsible for."

Cooper crooked the requisite smile. But her gaze panned over the half-open window blinds, drawn to a loitering shape in the corridor.

"Promise me," she said abruptly, as if she suspected that they were about to be interrupted. "_Promise me_ that it wasn't House who tried to grind your bones into bread."

Ignoring the quick, sick, speeding of his pulse as he did so, Wilson reached out and pried her fingers away from the bottle label she was scoring lines into with her nails. The fierce, familiar interlock of their fingers steadied him, smoothed out her bunching eyebrows.

He snorted, unable to help himself, and chided: "I'm a battered spouse – seriously?"

She dug her nails into the back of his hand and scowled. "Quit dodging the subject and tell me if I've seen the other guy!"

Wilson's half-smile faded. "No. You've never even met the other…person. People."

Her grip tightened in shock. She opened her mouth, then, tenaciously, pressed her lips together into a hard, thin line. Now that she was sure that there was no immediate risk to him, she would not ask anything he wouldn't volunteer. Neither of the twins cared to get caught up in crossfire.

Trusting that she was curious, but that she'd let the matter go if he were to speak of it, Wilson bit his tongue and wondered what he could safely allow himself to remember.

"Look," he said hesitantly, thumbing the fine skin over the backs of her strong, slender, surgeon's fingers and giving her hand a gentle shake to get her attention. "You're right about this being my first stop whenever I need to get the hell out of Dodge. So I owe you an explanation. Is Kit awake yet? I don't—I don't want to go through this twice."

Cooper studied him steadily, assessing his certainty. At length, she nodded and tapped the tip of her bottle against her pager.

"Yeah. He's in the cafeteria with Ben. House should be—"

"Here."

The blinds chattered and House laboured in from the corridor where he'd been eavesdropping. He paused as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and his brain to the handclasp between his partner and his newfound enemy. Wilson readied himself for another outbreak of war, but, as Cooper squeezed his hand and let go while House merely nodded to her, the pissing contest seemed to have reached an armistice. House spoke directly to Cooper, but his serious stare was all for Wilson.

"Now you've figured out I'm not the Big Unfriendly Giant, go set up your breakfast club or whatever," he dismissed her. "I need a word with Jack here about his magic beans."

TBC…


	11. Chapter 11

_**Recap: **After the death of two of his patients, Tania Walker (cervical cancer) and her six-year old daughter Alicia (paraneoplastic), Wilson is assaulted by Tania's husband Nick and her sister Lindsey in PPTH's locker room. Suffering from a broken wrist, dislocated shoulder, three rib fractures, numerous contusions and a nasty concussion, he claims he can remember very little about the attack, including whether or not it turned sexual. Whilst the police wait for Wilson's amnesia to subside, House becomes sure that his partner is lying about what he can remember, a certainty substantiated by Wilson's refusal to discuss it and his cavalier disregard for the precautionary medicines he's been prescribed to prevent him contracting any STIs, including HIV._

_Having refused to stay in an observation room at PPTH or under House's watch at his own apartment, Wilson drags House up to New York for a pre-planned visit to Megumi and Takito Hananda-Cooper, two neurosurgeons and friends of his from McGill. Upon arrival, Wilson is startled when Meg Cooper accidentally traps him in the elevator at the twins' apartment building and flashes back on his attack. He strikes his head on the wall and is rushed to New York Mercy, where the twins find cause to question PPTH's professionalism and House's part in the assault. _

_House, meanwhile, unearths a hitherto untold story from Wilson's past, in which he was previously attacked at his graduation day party. Unsure thus far of the specifics, House eavesdrops on a conversation between Wilson and Cooper and determines two things. Firstly, that the twins were involved and secondly, that Wilson seems to believe history is repeating itself. Wilson manages to assure Cooper that House is not responsible for hurting him, although he has some difficulty in doing so. In order to prove it, he has to agree to tell her and her brother what really went down in the locker room. _

_But is Wilson going to tell her the truth or is he, as House suspects, going to keep on lying? And, more importantly, __**why?**_

* * *

"You're an idiot!"

House hadn't registered how pissed he was until he hauled himself over the threshold into Wilson's bleak retreat. In retrospect, he should've noticed when he hurled the lunatic lawyer's medical file hard enough to leave a dent in the plastered walls of the twins' guest room. Lurch-stomping across the worn linoleum to displace Cooper from beside Wilson's bed he glared down, his mouth snarled up to one side as he chewed back several more choice accusations of thick-headedness. He didn't doubt that the phrase _idiot_ continued to radiate off him in colossal waves.

Wilson blinked up at him, less startled than he deserved to be. Neither the unwelcome dazzle zig-zagging through the blinds at House's back nor residual drowsiness from the sedative blinded him to the symptom's of last night's overdose: the sideburns of sweat slicking House's stubble to his skin, his bloodshot eyes and stiff, erratic hobble.

"And you," Wilson countered, voice husky but as deliberately mild as House's was hard, "are a _genius._"

Oh yeah, the _idiot_ part came across loud and clear.

Knocked askew on – if not actually _off_ – his high horse, House felt his glower falter. He canted his chin up as his eyes volunteered to slink toward his sneaker toes and retorted, as if it were obvious:

"I know."

Then he stooped and scuffed his lips against Wilson's ashen forehead. It was as close to an apology as he could stand.

Literally. A sullen cramp from his ruined thigh deposited him abruptly backwards onto the Ottoman, with a crunch of thin stuffing and sagging springs. Cooper, who had stepped aside to give him access to his partner, presented him with a piece of folded laboratory paper pinched between her middle and index finger and an arch, _serves you right,_ glance over her shoulder. She looked a question at Wilson, then made herself scarce.

"What did you do?" Wilson grouched wearily, as the scrolling door scraped closed behind her.

He stretched out a hand and slipped his fingers into the grooves between House's knuckles where he'd pressed his fist into the scarred concavity denting his jeans. Hooking the tip of his forefinger into the radial fossa, Wilson pressed lightly, adding:

"Did you scarf the whole bottle last night? Your pulse is…"

He stalled, adjusting the position of his finger.

"Is…uh…"

House waited, trying not to find a momentary peace the puttering of his pulse against the pad of Wilson's finger, the brief beats of normality.

"Iiiiisss…?" he prompted, a disgruntled corner of his mouth working its way upward.

Wilson's eyes flitted to his watch, then to the clock over the doors. House realised he'd lost count. His partner's pallid features reshuffled themselves into choppy, chagrined lines, as he failed to attribute his patchy focus to the sedative or the concussion, _because_ he was sedated and concussed. House turned his hand over and threaded his fingers through Wilson's.

"My pulse is fine. Unlike your head." He rolled his eyes around the room and stuck out his tongue, wobbling his own head from side to side and pulling a woozy face. "This is your brain on Ativan."

"Jerk," Wilson muttered, his discomfiture fading out through shades of relief into a wan version of his _I want to be annoyed and you're making me smile_ expression.

House snorted. He'd hardly got started yet. The pissed didn't go away just because he was taking it too.

He dislodged Wilson's fingers from another, not-so-stealthy, attempt to measure his pulse and reached for the untouched breakfast tray that someone had deposited on the bedside table.

"It's not cancer; quit bedside doctoring. _You're_ the patient; look, you have jello." He ripped the top off the plastic tub, stuck in a spoon and slurped up the crimson globules noisily. "It's _your_ damn show, remember."

Wilson grimaced. "No, thanks. I'd rather forget."

Again, as he had outside the elevator, House felt a fleeting tingle of suspicion. An idle comment? Or a clue? Was there a choice: to remember or to forget? Had Wilson's mind simply shut down over his assault, conscious recall shying into the smog of amnesia, or was he selectively sequestering those memories in denial's smoke and mirrors?

Currently he was still eyeing the disappearing jello doubtfully.

"Being assaulted doesn't rate cable?"

"Sure. Right now it's screening a freakin' modern fairytale." Shelving his speculations, House deepened his voice, dramatic narrator-style. "Today, we return for part two of the shocking five-part season finale: _The White Knight, Wounded—_"

"Oh yeah," Wilson interrupted dryly. "I'm a real St. George."

He wiggled the fingers in his neon cast.

An image of Wilson in buffed silver armour atop a rearing white jade, his sword gleaming in the sunshine flashed into House's mind's eye. He blinked it away, contemplated the pink wrap and the point sourly. Wilson wouldn't know which end of his great grey nag went first and he'd go arse over teakettle the second he drew the blade out of its sheath. He had a bad habit of falling on his sword.

"St. George," House agreed, "Didn't make excuses for the dragon by claiming he was poking it with a sharp stick."

All traces of humour were snuffed from Wilson's face.

"_And_ he saved the princess."

The silence was sudden, swelled uncomfortably. House cleared his throat to puncture it.

"Yeah," he said, rough and a trifle guilty for the reminder. "Got that you didn't. Brought me in _in media res_ on this one, though, buddy. In the interests of spectatorship, I want some back story."

Wilson shifted amidst the pillows so that he lay more decidedly on his back, no longer craned towards House. He rubbed at his left temple, as though his headache had taken a sharp spike. He looked about as thrilled at the prospect of another round of questions as he had about his rectal exam. Resisting the impulse to make a crack about it – _crack_. Damn. _Bah dah bah!_ – House sat forward and propped his chin on the handle of his cane, studying Wilson intently.

"What happened at graduation?"

Wilson's heart monitor skipped one beat. His face went as unreadable as House had ever seen it.

"How long were you eavesdropping?" he parried.

"Long enough."

House unclenched one hand from his cane to palm his thigh as he thought back over what he'd heard. If he'd understood the gist of the not-conversation Wilson had been having with his new – old? – BFF, he'd been on the business end of an assault before. Although whether his attackers then had simply pounded _on_ him or _into_ him dangled unhelpfully on a series of ellipses.

Still kneading at his throbbing leg, House found the baldest words he could bear and elaborated.

"Long enough to know you cheated on Sam at least once before you even married her. I figure you got your tonsils so thoroughly watered at an after-party that you were smiling at the grass. Twenty-whatever that you were, you wound up trying some macho schtick and nailed – or tried to nail – some ho. Either her friends or Sam's or some other swerved-out knuckle draggers at the revels saw fit to teach you the error of your ways. Cooper found you. Cops busted the party and the pair of you pretended it had never happened. Saving Sam's ego or some chivalric bullshit, what, a month before the wedding?"

Wilson was lying so still he could have been a cadaver. Was it the reflection of the nearby strip lights or something else that put a momentary glint in his eye? He sighed, hard enough to make himself wince, and his face creased with resignation.

"Yeah," he said tonelessly. "That's exactly what happened."

House stared at him, agog.

"No, it wasn't," he realised. "And you know it wasn't."

Wilson gave him surprised eyes.

"House, you're right. I…uh…" The uncertainty in his voice made House doubt his own revelation, as Wilson offered the explanation that hadn't been forthcoming before. "Cooper…Coop's seen me like this before. That's why I…that's why I thought I wanted to come. She and Kit, they…I know they can handle this."

House felt hurt shock right through him, deflecting him from thoughts and doubts alike.

He stated: "You didn't think I could."

Wilson made a vague, apologetic gesture with his left hand.

"You yelled at me in the E.R. Twice," he pointed out. "And you got yourself kicked out. _Twice._ I…" He bit the inside of his lip, pride and honesty warring, before he said: "I was badly hurt, House, and you made it so that you weren't there."

A muscle in his jaw ticked, anger, disappointment; he reached for House's wrist to take the sting out of it nonetheless.

"I wanted some straightforward, uncomplicated _support._"

The firm, slightly muggy grip of Wilson's hand was gentle; that of the bitter, marginalised sensation that had been stalking House since they arrived was stronger. His eyes shifted from Wilson to the ground, lit on the Kanga he'd given Wilson to hold last night, now discarded in the dust under the bed. He flashed back, suddenly, on another room, barely remembered, but for the bulging bags of toys, tolerated only for their role in the early stages of development.

_They lined the blue carpet beside the wall. The heads of teddies and tin soldiers, the wormy red tubing of a plastic stethoscope and the ridged wheel of a model monster truck stuck out around the tight knotting of the black plastic handles. The bags sat like Santa's sacks, awaiting a ride in the dumpster to the fly-thronged heaps of the city's trash. His father pointedly scraped his plate off over the head of a lone forgotten bear, peering hopelessly up from the depths of the kitchen bin; its beady sorrow was soured by the spilling gravy._

_"No nonsense now, Greg. You don't need nightlights, imaginary friends and hand-holding. Honesty, integrity and courage make a man, nothing else. You _are _a man, aren't you, boy?"_

_I don't care,_ House thought, with a six-year old's fierceness, while staring at the discarded Kanga. _I don't care._ He didn't_._ Not about the damn stuffed animal, anyway. But his father's stupid life lesson hadn't taken hold, because it was harder not to care about Cooper's accusation of domestic battery and Wilson's doubt in him.

"Yeah," he growled, to mask the croak in his voice. "It's real uncomplicated having friends that accuse _me_ of working you over."

Wilson pulled a slight face. "In retrospect I now remember that they weren't any good at it either."

The wry fondness in his voice was so familiar that House's stomach contracted, hearing it aimed at someone other than him. Without being able to pinpoint what gave it away, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt with whom Wilson had been recklessly macho at the party_._

"It _wasn't_ some ho," he said, hollow and segueing. "It was Cooper."

Wilson's face grew guarded. House shifted his attention from Wilson's expression to his left hand, imagining not his own fingers but Cooper's entwined with his partner's again. Even more emptily, he demanded:

"How long have you been screwing her?"

Wilson pulled his hand free, fisted it. Dark ghosts of memories and conflicting emotions swept across his face. He shut his eyes for a few seconds, regrouped, and glared at House with a tired impatience that suggested he'd had this same conversation with every wife he'd ever married.

"We haven't slept together since med school," he stated. "That night was the last time."

House scrolled his gaze over his partner, assessing the tightened tendons in his left arm, the set of his chin, and his taut, pale lips. He shook his head.

"No, it wasn't. You know it wasn't."

Wilson's breath _hrrred_ through his teeth. _No, it wasn't._

House guessed: "She's why Sam broke up with you."

"No." A grim, guilty glance. "Bonnie."

The hold on his wrist was reclaimed, tight enough to secure his full concentration.

"That _was_ the last time, House. I swear."

This time, House believed it. Some musculoskelatal tension in Wilson always relaxed when he told the truth; he felt it ebbing through his fingers. House nodded curtly and played the card he'd come in to play in what was rapidly becoming a high-stakes game of bluff.

"Good. No need to tell her you have a communicable disease then."

Wilson blenched, his grumpy guardedness swept away by raw surprise. "What?"

House hooked his cane over the handle of the tall bedside cabinet's upper drawer and sat forward again. He clasped Wilson's left hand in his and leaned closer, letting his face gravity droop his face like melting wax. He stroked a dishevelled section of Wilson's hair back off his cheek, watched the faint flush brought on by tossing and turning all night fade into a sickened pallor.

"You…uh…"

House let his fingers trail down Wilson's arm, squeezing at his elbow where it was propped in the T-junction between the mattress and the mound of pillows.

"You know…" House tried again, haltingly.

His right hand worked beneath the pillows, searched; his other gripped Wilson's hand even tighter. He bowed his head and drew their tangled fists to his mouth, pressed a damp 'o' against Wilson's skin, lips touching the shiny translucent plaster affixing the cannulas in place.

"House," Wilson said, voice steady but breathing shallow. "Spit it out."

House nodded, lips still warm against Wilson's clammy skin. His fist closed beneath the pillow. He drew it out and sat up, letting go of Wilson's hand. He grabbed the little table that swivelled out on a stalk to hover over the bed and pulled it out. Opening his fist, he let three tablets plink down onto the empty surface.

"You know," he said, the words ejected like chewed rocks from between his teeth. "Preventatives only work if you take them _before_ you get sick!"

Wilson's astonished double-take would have been comical if House wasn't so royally pissed off. He goggled at the post-exposure prophylaxis that he'd secreted away as if he'd never heard of HIV before. Then his eyes flew to the slip of paper that Cooper had left on the end of the Ottoman. House snagged it and shook it open with a grandstanding flourish. He took a petty kind of satisfaction in the betrayal that flashed through his partner's eyes as Wilson recognised the header as belonging to the NYMH lab.

"That's mine!"

It wasn't; but he'd meant Wilson to think so. House dangled it provokingly, just out of Wilson's demandingly outstretched hand. Wilson snatched at it, but House hoisted the paper higher, and his partner slumped back against the pillows with a stifled gasp, going, if possible, paler and panting. Knowing any attention to it wouldn't be welcome and not at all in the mood to give it, House hauled himself to his feet and, under the pretext of reviewing Wilson's tox screen results, quickly checked his own blood work that Cooper had put through herself a few hours ago.

His liver enzyme function tests weren't good. His AST levels were 48 and ALTs 49, well above the safe level of 40 by both Princeton and New York's standards. But some labs considered anything below fifty to be acceptable. His acetaminophen level was significantly over 10 ug/ml too. Although, considering the whacking dose of it he'd subjected his liver to yesterday, it could have been a lot worse. He scrunched the paper back into its original creases and pocketed it.

"How the hell did you bribe Meg to give you that?" Wilson gritted out, gesticulating toward House's bulging jacket.

"Bottle of moonshine, eighty percent proof," he lied and hurriedly squelched the inclination to mentally thank Cooper for the impromptu rescue.

She'd appeared, uncritically, in an oversized man's shirt that smelt faintly of straw and had saddle soap stains on both cuffs, while he made violent four a.m. sacrifices at the porcelain temple. She'd brought with her a dose of active charcoal, a litre bottle of water, and a 140 mg/kg loading dose of N-acetylcysteine. Then she'd sat on the bathroom floor too, apparently preoccupied with reading the information on the back of the juice carton that she'd emptied into a toothmug for him to dissolve the oral dose in, until she was sure he wouldn't need an anti-emetic.

_What the hell kind of person has this at home?_ House had demanded, between dry retches.

_The kind of people who regularly end up passed out in their own hallway and keep NG tubes and liquid feed to handle an eating disorder at home too,_ she'd retorted, getting up and leaving him to stagger down the white-carpeted corridor to the guest room alone.

Teeth clenched against another sulky muscular spasm from his leg, House hop-stepped back over to the bedside cabinet. Rooting the small silver key that he'd purloined from Cooper out of his pocket, he unlocked the top drawer and extracted the paper bag containing Wilson's post-HIV exposure meds. He tossed the slightly grubby tablets loose into the drawer, measured out new doses and stuffed them into a dispensing cup, which he palmed while he slopped water out of the jug into the plastic cup on the breakfast tray. Then, pointedly, he held out the pills and the water to Wilson.

"In case it hasn't occurred to you, _doc_," he growled, trying to sound as serious as he'd felt when he'd first figured out what Wilson was concealing with the withheld tox screen, "It's not just _your_ life you're screwing with. Or…" He withdrew his hand as he remembered, with a nasty heave in his chest, the row in the car park. "Is it?"

Wilson glowered at him, spinning between disgust and relief.

"I'm not screwing with either of our lives," he snapped. "Because I _don't_ have HIV."

"You don't know that."

Wilson's jaw jutted stubbornly. "I do. The knock on the head made me psychic."

House snorted. "Made you _psycho._"

"I _don't_ have HIV."

"_I_ don't know that!" House yelled.

Wilson wilted.

"They're educated, mid-thirties, married—" he excused.

House chopped at the air with his hand, impatient.

"Great, so you got attacked by my fellows. _Cameron_—"

"Got blood coughed on her by a patient and _does not_ have HIV," Wilson interjected, not giving him an inch. He held up his left hand and flicked points off on upraised fingers. "Lindsey and Keith are both educated, middle aged and married. She is undergoing IVF and he is her donor. They will have been regularly screened and treated for possible STDs. The odds of either one of them carrying a life-threatening transmissible disease are significantly lowered—"

"Riiiiight," House cut in, dragging the word out to breaking point. "Because as a middle-aged, married _moron_ bumping uglies with some bar whore behind your wife's back – or with your wife while _she_ was shtupping the postman_ you_ never picked up an STD—"

"I didn't pick up_ HIV!_"

"I've read your medical file, you jackass! You didn't always pick up a Trojan either."

Wilson muttered something under his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose, as though his headache was chipping its way through the codeine he'd been prescribed. If it was meant to be medical blackmail, House ignored it.

"If you're going to make stupid statements, shouldn't you hum or have a crystal ball or some tea leaves?" he demanded harshly. "Because unless you're hindsight's gone 20-20 all of a sudden, I'm gonna bet that son of a bitch didn't pick one up either."

"G-ddamnit, House!" Wilson jerked his hand down and gawped at him, cheeks hot with angry embarrassment. "We don't even know that—_that_—"

He made a haphazard, non-specific gesture meant to encompass an action he couldn't put into words.

"You're sure about this," House challenged, tapping the pill cup with a forefinger, "but you're not sure about _that_?"

He repeated Wilson's mime explicitly and accurately. Wilson flinched. Then, slowly, he shook his head, more in defeat than in denial.

"I-I'm not sure of anything," he admitted.

House said nothing, watched Wilson pass a hand over his face, trying to smooth out the nervous fasciculations ticking in his cheeks and brow. He fidgeted for a few seconds, pinched the bridge of his nose again, shifted his fingers to the corners of his eyes, pressed. Hard. His mouth tight and bowing down at the corners, Wilson muttered:

"You couldn't've left this conversation for later?"

The quaver in his voice made House's blood pressure dip as abruptly as it had spiked. He plunked down heavily onto the edge of the bed, one hand finding Wilson's knee through the covers and grasping it.

"No." He picked up the little pill cup with his free hand and knocked it firmly against Wilson's knuckles. "Take them so we _never_ have to have it."

Wilson dug at his eyes a moment longer. Face mostly obscured by his hand, he nodded. He didn't take the cup.

Muffled as it was, the clamour of thoughts and emotions churning inside his partner made House retreat swiftly toward safer ground. A reflexive smirk twitching at his lips, he zoomed the cup in a half-circle and zig-zagged it back toward Wilson's face.

"Open wide here comes the—" he faltered, figured _what the hell_, finished: "Open wide and insert inappropriately sexualised object."

Wilson peered over his hand, which slipped down to cover his mouth; his expression was equal parts seriousness and dimples.

"_Don't _go there," he warned, through his fingers

House plopped the cup back onto the little over-the-bed table, exaggerating a sigh to release the unstoppable, unacceptable, bubble of laughter stretching at his throat like a scream.

"I'm a guy. I _live_ there. _You_ live there."

Wilson rubbed his hand over his face again, smooshing lines of stress and smile alike further into one another. At last, he reached for the pill cup, half-rolling his eyes in House's direction.

"Hard as it is for you to get your head around it: we're on vacation."

He studied the little tablets lying in the base of the paper cup, turned them over with the tip of his forefinger, rechecking type and dosage, as though he hadn't seen House measure them out. His throat bobbed twice and he added without any trace of a smile:

"If I have it, these are no guarantee."

House said nothing; to that, there was nothing he _could_ say. Not, that was, without giving himself away. But the game was won now. He opened his mouth; Wilson put down the cup.

"But I don't." Wilson looked up suddenly, his voice very soft and his eyes all challenge. "And you know I don't."

House's teeth clicked together as his jaw snapped closed, cornering a half-expelled epithet in his throat. Set a liar to catch a liar. Beaten at his own game, he pulled from his other pocket the relevant pages of Walker and Granville's crunched up medical files and slung them into Wilson's lap.

"All clear, all negative, all tested last week."

Wilson scooted the swivelling table aside and snatched up the papers, fumbling through them as quickly as his cast and cannula encumbered hands could turn the pages.

"You son of a bitch," he breathed, as though he'd hardly taken in air in the last ten minutes. Then, with a searing, upward glance: "What _the hell_ are you trying to do to me?"

"What the hell are you hiding from me?" House fired back.

To his disbelief, the left corner of Wilson's mouth crinkled up, dimpling his cheek.

"Hiding?" he inquired, voice so light that the slightest change in the surrounding murmur of the neurology wing, always muffled and muted, would have stolen his words. "I'm in a goldfish bowl, being attended by two overqualified neuro_surgeons,_ and I have the world's first and best diagnostician breaking illegally into my medical files and those of the people who put me in here. I've got a few broken bones and a concussion, House. I don't warrant this much attention and it's a lot too public to use as a hiding place."

The weightlessness of his voice didn't match the slow decline of his brows, tiny crinkles emerging on his brow, a child's impression of sea birds sobbing on the wind.

"I'm not hiding _from you_," Wilson went on, softly, seriously, eyes half-shuttered and his tongue repeatedly slicking his lips. "I have…some kind of amnesia. If I'm hiding, I promise you I'm hiding from myself too."

House's fingers crept up of their own accord to twist amidst Wilson's again, a lifeline amidst the impossible turbulence of the last forty-three hours. He blew his breath out in a long, heavy sigh and met Wilson's troubled glance ruefully. Denial. It wasn't just a big-ass, far-off river; it was a freaking ocean. And he was pretty sure they were both going to drown in it.

**

* * *

**

"Help me get up." Wilson broke the pensive pause by groping cack-handedly with his cast-encased fingers at the layered blankets covering him. "We should join the others in the canteen."

House pressed his partner's good hand down onto the edge of the blue wool loose-weave, gently trapped him amidst the starched sheets and soft pillows.

"And cut out on free room service?"

He nodded to the tray he'd denuded of jello. As far as he'd understood it, Cooper was about to transform into hospital maid to replace it with something that actually qualified as edible.

"I'm fine, House." Wilson levelled a warning look at him. "I can manage a trip downstairs. I got _here,_ didn't I?"

House countered with a stare that was all flatness and blunt edges. Whilst Wilson undoubtedly meant _here_, New York, _here_ was also New York Mercy _Hospital._

Wilson let his expression drop and his eyes slid sidelong, half-acknowledging, half-ignoring House's silent correction. Straightening his arm, he moved their joined hands off the edge of the mattress and released his fingers from the interlock, persisting:

"Can you get the cannulas, please?"

House allowed his fingers to slip free, but he made no move to extract Wilson from the long tubular tethers of the IV wires and coloured leads of the monitor. Mentally crowning himself king of the blindingly obvious, he stated:

"You need to rest."

"I'm fine," Wilson repeated.

The gravely tiredness to his voice disagreed. He scrunched back his blankets regardless.

House opened his mouth and Wilson forestalled any answer he might have made; he curled three fingers of his left hand into his palm and hushed him with a pointed index.

"Don't." Wilson's tone was firm; the distance and distress in his shadowy, red-rimmed eyes momentarily gave way to fondness. "You're the last person I'm taking recovery advice from. I'd like to come out of this without an addiction to prescription pills and obnoxious pornography."

House chewed on an upward quirk of his lip.

"You don't know what you're missing."

"Actually, I do," Wilson pointed out wryly. "A sizeable chunk of my credit account." He extended his arm a little further. "Please, get me out of these. I really need to – ah, um…"

He made an oblique motion toward the lap of his grey sweats and the adjoining bathroom.

House scanned the nearby cabinet and bedside table in the hope of presenting him with a convenient bedpan, but there were none in sight. Rather than kick Wilson where it would hurt – his aching dignity – he didn't threaten to summon a nurse. He reached up and hit the off-switch on the monitor.

It took a few minutes to disengage Wilson from the wires he'd tousled in his sleep. House's hands were none too steady and he had to stop twice as the wibbling of the leads stirred up a swell of seasickness in his overtaxed internal organs. He wasn't clear on who was steadying whom as Wilson eased his legs over the edge of the bed and stopped short, shallow breaths shuddering through his teeth, while House balanced precariously in front of him, his weight propped heavily on his good leg and his right hand gripping Wilson's left shoulder while the room danced an absurd architectural jig in his peripheries. It was several more laboured moments before he could hobble aside and shift his hand to Wilson's elbow to winch him to his feet.

In spite of his rather urgent gesticulation, Wilson didn't instantly make for the restroom. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot once or twice, then a sharp quiver bolted through his muscles and he shot several rapid glances toward the sliding door to the corridor.

"That—That doesn't lock—?" he started, bit at his lip to curtail the rhetorical question and muttered, "Fuck," under his breath.

He pushed past the monitor stands and limped reluctantly over to the bathroom. Unexpectedly, he didn't close the door behind him.

House kept his attention on the loops of drip lines and monitor cables that he was looping over the hooks on their various stands. A cramp low in his belly reminded him of the accursed nights after his own discharge from hospital, when he'd had his infarction; of Wilson leaning against the wall outside his bathroom talking about fuck knew what or cared to keep House from roaring in discomfort and despair as his body, then unused to the Vicodin, turned the most rudimentary bodily functions into an intimidating, excruciating fiasco. Wilson's newfound aversion to small, wet, isolated spaces would treat him no more kindly.

"What clothes do you want?" he called out, more to let Wilson know he was still there and, most importantly, alone, than any urge to switch doctoring for buttling.

The paper-holder twanged as though Wilson had jumped and banged his elbow on it. There was a hasty shuffling of lowered sweat pants being hitched back up.

"Uhm..." A soft, self-reproachful curse and sweat pants scuffled, descending again. "Clean t-shirt. Socks." A tentative tinkle of piss hitting the bowl. "Briefs, I guess." A nervy pause. "Did I pack any other track pants?"

Over another brief whoosh of urine, House limped across to the vacant bed opposite Wilson's and rooted through the navy duffle that Hananda must've brought down sometime during the night. The clink of shifting toiletries arrested Wilson's expulsion again. House resisted the urge to roll his eyes and suggest he get it over with.

"Yeah." He located a faded black pair with a button fly below the drawstring that Wilson usually slept in and had probably packed in case the weather turned unseasonably cold. "You want them now?"

Another trickle hastily abated.

"N-no, no. Give me a sec."

House dug out briefs, t-shirt and socks and tossed everything onto the bed, one ear cocked toward the bathroom. There was a fractious rustle of clothes. Unable to resist, he called:

"Want me to whistle?"

A choked sound that might've been a chuckle.

"Shut up," Wilson suggested, not unpleasantly.

He stretched back and shoved the door to. This time, the rush of urine was decisive. House let his breath run out in a sigh of vicarious relief.

* * *

There were another half-dozen false starts once Wilson re-emerged from the bathroom. With the shock and the Vicodin worn off, it had become a two-man job to extricate his injured arm from his sweater and t-shirt. The effort left him pasty and panting. Inches apart, the discarded clothing dangling from his hand, House could feel a good case of the shakes skittering through Wilson as soon as his torso was bare.

"Cold," he muttered, when he noticed House noticing.

The defiance in his tired eyes and the tight clasp of his left arm around his abdomen in addition to the cast he had clamped to his chest argued otherwise. House said nothing. He let the filthy McGill sweater and t-shirt flop onto the naked pink rubber-covered mattress and reached for the nearest polo shirt.

"No, not that one." Wilson gave his head an edgy half-shake as it came into view. "That green clashes with every one of my bruises. There should be a blue one in there somewhere."

This time, House did roll his eyes. He dug in the bag once more.

"This isn't a fashion show. With that sheep fluff on your face, no one's going to ask you to diagnose them. Sweaty hair and scruff definitely says patient."

"Good." Wilson's voice was flat. "The last thing I want is to be mistaken for a professional."

House buckled his brow, preparing a phoney reassurance that fishing for one deserved. Wilson avoided the look, clenched a muscle in his jaw, as if he were regretting having opened his mouth at all. Frown deepening, House filed that remark alongside Wilson's grim conviction that his injuries were his own fault and made a mental jotting to check on the dead duo's patient files as soon as he could.

Rather than let the remark lie untouched, he said belatedly:

"All you need is a false nose and my glasses to go incognito."

"As what?" Obviously appreciating the turn of conversation, Wilson raised a faint sceptical smile. "A Jewish money lender?"

Someone brushed against the main doors, unseen behind the closed slat blinds, and he grabbed for his bag.

"House – gimme me my shirt!"

He snatched the nearest one, by chance the blue he'd been hoping for, and plastered it against his chest, concealing as much of his bruised body as he could. House set a steadying hand against his right bicep as Wilson's weakened knee wobbled at the lurch into action and the skin shivered violently under his palm. No, definitely not cold.

Forcing levity, he continued: "Well, you _are_ about to buy me breakfast."

That won him a twitchy attempt at a smile. A few moments later, he was able to prise the shirt out of Wilson's finger-vice to help him squirm painfully into first that and then his navy hoody.

"Forget it," Wilson grimaced, changing his mind about his planned attire as soon as House had settled the sweater's hem. House hesitated, his thumb hooked in the waistband of his partner's track pants. Wilson seized his right wrist and pushed his hand away. Back hunched, head bowed and arms crossed to shelter his ribs, he kept House's right shirtsleeve imprisoned until he drew both hands back beside his own hips and held up his palms in careful surrender. "Not here."

The inflection had changed; _here_ was no longer the city but the hospital. That his customary compulsiveness to single-handedly disprove the hygiene hypothesis and to change his clothes for every activity was snuffed out by the goose bumps scurrying across his skin bespoke his reluctance to be in the place. How long would that last? House tried to suppress a queasy-making recollection of the office beside his stripped down to blank walls and bland carpet, Lew mumbling under his breath as he worked Wilson's name off the door. Failing, he latched his free arm around Wilson's back and reeled him in until they were chest to chest.

Wilson started to cock an incredulous look at him through his haphazard hair, then blinked it away and let go of House's wrist, uncrossing his good arm to clasp House's bicep and press their bodies flush together with a relieved exhale. An accompanying groan buffeted the open neck of House's crinkled shirt.

"Fuck," Wilson muttered with feeling. "Why does it always hurt _so_ much worse a few days after?"

He knew, of course. He knew that the short-term circulation of epinephrine and catecholamines circulating in the immediate aftermath of an injury had subsided, rendering the nociceptive pain gates and pathways in the spinal cord more sensitive to his wounds' stimuli. He knew too that the initial shock of nerve desensitisation had faded. House rocked onto his left heel, leaning back, and said simply:

"Wanna go back to bed?"

Hand hidden behind Wilson's back, he crossed his fingers. He was starting to sweat from the effort of standing for too long. Strained by his own vomiting jag and the toxins being dredged out of his system, all his innards felt fragile and his muscles flaccid. Just thinking about another marathon through NYMH's meandering corridors had made his own thigh ratchet the pain level up another notch: from severely unpleasant to downright miserable. The ancient Ottoman a few feet behind was tempting.

Wilson wiggled his head and haltingly pressed his palm against House's chest, standing on his own once more.

"No, no. It's easier if we go—" He balled up a fistful of sky blue cotton and thumped it lightly against House's sternum. "It's easier if…" He tailed off and tried a third time, almost angrily: "I can't lie around _feeling_ everything or—or trying _not_ to feel it." Phantom pill bottles and porn channels hovered in the pause. "I need to _do_ something."

"Fine." If that came out harder than he'd intended, House blamed the corner of the pill bottle with his substitute meds choosing that insufferably karmic moment to dig a little deeper into his hip. He let his hands fall to his sides. "Ready to go?"

"Nearly." Contemplating and then dismissing socks as too tricky, Wilson cast about for his shoes. "Sneakers?"

"There."

House toed his partner's well-worn white Nikes out from under the bed and gave him space to steady his weight against the metal rail while he trod them on with unusual disregard for not breaking the backs.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

Wilson inhaled as deeply as he dared and eyed the stretch of floor between the bed and the doors soberly.

"Bullshit," House gave his good shoulder a light shove and, resigned to the trek, scooped up his cane. "Sit your ass down and I'll go get a chariot."

* * *

With Wilson navigating, the trip down to the canteen didn't turn out to be the ten thousand mile hike House had expected. Reaching the last sloping corridor to the canteen in under ten minutes, he whooped gleefully and hopped onto the back rail of the wheelchair to let it coast on down. The breezy ripple through his hair loosed droplets of sick sweat from his brow and tumbled them coolly down his face. He closed his eyes, let the little whiz of speeding air sweep back the walls of responsibility that were closing in.

"Whoa." Wilson dropped the heel of his hand against the left wheel, half-stalling, half-spinning the chair to a standstill. "Hold on a sec."

House lurched to the ground, shoulders sagging as the corridor came back into focus.

"What?"

Wilson met his eyes in the reflective glass of the canteen's double doors.

"Don't turn this into another interrogation, okay?" He rubbed one of his dishevelled eyebrows, glanced down and then up through his fingers. "I know you know I've said I'll tell them something. I want to keep it…basic."

_Meaning: bullshit._

House propped his weight on the handles of the chair, made it tougher for Wilson to hold it in place. His partner frowned, tightened his grip.

"I didn't come here to burden them with my medical mishaps," he insisted. "I just…I needed to get away from Princeton – and-and to ask Meg a couple of things. So if whatever I say in there sparks some burning question, don't ask. Save it for later. For Monday."

House studied first Wilson, then his reflection in the glass. The half-profile, obscured by his restless hand reminded him of all the doors Wilson had slammed in his face whenever his own life threw him a curveball. But the ephemeral likeness searched to lock eyes with him, guardedly; a fleeting glance beyond his own shields that drove a shard of panic into House's heart. In that tentative glance was the gleam of subtext, a silent request for more than he was saying.

_What do you want?_ House thought claustrophobically._ What do you need? Why in the hell are you looking to me? I'm useless at this tissues and tell-me-all-about it hoohah. If you're going to _look_ at me like that, you'd better be giving me a cloak and dagger not some code for covert cuddling…_

"I get that this is another puzzle to you," Wilson pressed – and House's heart had no _right_ to wrench like that, a twist that shot down to his leg and _tightened_, not when he _knew_ he couldn't do support, _knew_ he was better at the puzzle part of this sorry situation – "But let it lie. Just let – it – lie."

"That works for you, does it?" House asked roughly, ignoring the odd looks cast his way by another wheelchair bound victim of private healthcare as she passed. Gagging orders weren't on his wish list either. "Scheduling a meltdown."

Wilson answered that paradox with a flat frown.

"House, I'm serious."

The doors were closing again. House sighed and subsided – for now.

"Check. Bagels and coffee, hold the thumbscrews and the flaming torches."

Wilson kept frowning.

House rolled his eyes so hard he thought they might fall out. Letting go of the chair with one hand, he sketched an X over his chest in a mocking parody of the Catholic gesture.

"Cross my heart, hope to die," he singsonged with a levity he didn't feel.

It raised one corner of Wilson's mouth in a half-hearted smile.

"Now swear on everything _sacrilegious_," he warned.

House groaned and mimed an autopsy Y over his chest too.

"Spoilsport," he muttered, nudging at the chair handles again.

Wilson's narrowed eyes met his in the reflective glass, one fuzzy eyebrow hooked in a thoroughly sceptical look as he waited for House to produce crossed fingers and a get out of jail clause. Crossing his toes in his sneakers, just in case, House stared back with exaggerated solemnity. Finally, Wilson capitulated with a faint smile and he let go of the wheel.

TBC…


	12. Chapter 12

**Part Ten B:**

Cooper's phone cheeped, gave Wilson an excuse to blink, to break the seizured stare between Hananda's quiet boldness and his own resentful recoil. He shifted his attention to watch her fish in the pocket of the scarlet hoody she'd thrown over her clothes, retrieve her cell and excuse herself. She hopped up onto the seat and climbed over into the empty booth beside them to avoid dislodging the injured Ben or House.

Wilson followed her progress, forcing a reprieve while she paced habitually back and forth across a patch of sunshine-tiled floor between the nearby tables. Her eyes flicked once toward their booth and once up at the large clock on the adjacent wall. Instead of numbers, there were inspirational words on its face: hope, pray, love, trust.

_Would that I could…_

Great. He was imagining being lectured at by a clock. A tickless clock, now he was listening for the sound of the mechanisms. Either the low-grade hubbub of the canteen overwhelmed it or its countdown to his imminent confession was silent. Only the hands moved inch by inch across his body – _its_ body – its _face_ – not his, _not_ his! Jerking in a breath and hugging his cast to his chest to squash the slithering skin-recollection, Wilson stared hard at Cooper's black loafers. He tried not to visualise the suede growing damp in the puddles of sunlight.

_Not again. Not __**again**__. Please…_

"Ha!" The tail end of her conversation mercifully truncated the inexorable tilting of reality. In spite of the exclamation, authentic amusement warmed her voice. Her lips curled in a competitive smile. "You'd better believe we're on for next week, sister. I'm going to kick your peg-legged ass!"

A jingling laugh, louder than good manners encouraged, more contained than friendship required, closed the call.

"Was that Sam?" The wet white memory fog receded as Wilson swiftly searched over his shoulder for the buoyant blonde curls of his ex-wife approaching. "Is she—?"

"Not here." Cooper pocketed her cell and mountaineered over the booth-back to resume her seat with a light bump. "We," her gesture included Ben and Hananda, "Usually all play tennis on Saturdays. When you said you were coming I figured we could get the old college team back together for a couple of games. Then you turned up like this and I forgot about cancelling the court."

A fleeting recollection of friendly sparring in tennis-whites, sharing the scorekeeping and sports bottles of water, jibed with the thought of Cyclone Sam at his bedside. A small part of him wished she would come. He could breathe out, let her take over, subside into his shock and hurt, just sleep until he felt better. But whatever rights he had left to his own body, his choices, would be gone until she had fussed herself out.

He exclaimed rather harshly: "Does she know I'm _here_?"

"Not now." The cheer that had briefly infused Cooper's voice faded. "I said you'd cancelled for a patient and I had a hangover. Do I make a habit of dropping you in it?"

The reproach was as black and white as a film's flashback: the cops, the EMTs, Sam crying, Cooper lying for him…. Wilson dropped her gaze sheepishly.

"Sorry," he murmured, added: "I just don't think I could cope with—I mean, did you give her my love?"

Cooper half-circled her eyes toward the glass ceiling at determination to maintain the careful friendliness he and his ex-wife had crafted some years after the initial blame-game of the divorce had played itself out.

"Obviously." She reached for her spiked orange juice and took a sip, sought his eyes again. "And I picked your side, remember? You know you can say anything to me."

"To us," Hananda seconded.

_Right._ Wilson dropped his gaze to the white plastic cutlery haphazardly laid out in the centre of the pine table. Surrounded by curious eyes, he knew he'd been steered back to the moment where he had to dissect himself, to expose more pieces of his disaster case. It was almost worse than having to disrobe for the SART.

"Talk to us, Jim."

Ben's half-glance at House allowed for his inclusion in their closed college clique, but Wilson scarcely registered it. Cloistered between them, the canteen shrank to the size of a car.

* * *

_The twins' rusty white Nova idled in the police station parking lot. Ben knelt on the back seat, gown bunched up around his legs. The low roof had knocked his mortarboard askew. He dug around in the Walmart carrier stuffed between two sets of black graduation robes folded up on the parcel shelf. He extracted a popper pack of aspirin, two bottles of coloured vitamin water, a packet of wet wipes and sat back down. _

_"Talk to us," he demanded, handing the wipes to James and the water to Meg. As she grit her teeth against a bad case of the shakes, he added: "Jim, what happened?"_

_"What did you do to her?" One hand on the steering wheel, the other clasped around his sister's wrist to monitor her rattling pulse, Kit apprehended James's worried eyes via the rear-view mirror._

_His stomach lurched. As he mopped at the dried blood on his split lip, conflicting snapshots exploded through his head. The synchronous dive into soft pillows and hungry kisses. The head-spinning punch to his jaw – one – and – two – the sapphire ring that slammed into his eye, filled his vision with a blaze of blue that became the starched dark shirt of the detective. The man's voice was glacial_: _"So, you like to take advantage of vulnerable women, do you?" _

_James shook his head helplessly and felt the whole world slosh. He was still drunk, far too drunk, to make sense of this. He didn't know what had happened. What he had done._

_Just as she had when she knocked on the door of the interrogation room, Meg offered a save. _

_"Wrong questions," she croaked from the front seat._

_She seemed about to say more but had to double over, vomited into an old MacDonald's carton._

_"Forget it." Ben leaned over the passenger seat. Kit had scooped his sister's hair back from her face; Ben took it from him, banded it loosely with his own hand. "And forget graduation. Let's just get them to a hospital." _

_"No!" Meg bolted upright, hair flying free in sweaty black rats' tails. She dragged the sleeve of the paper jumpsuit the cops had given her across her mouth. "No way."_

_"Meg, I know you don't trust other doctors, but you do _not _look well. Neither of you do." Hands on her shoulders, Ben included James in his troubled glance. "You can't show up to graduation looking like this." _

_"He's right." Kit looked as though he wanted to be sick too. "Dad's—I mean Jed's—going to be there. Don't give him an excuse to try out one of his pills on you."_

_Meg grabbed the stick to stop her twin shifting into gear. _

_"It isn't Jed who gives me the funny pills," she muttered._

_Kit blinked at her, frowned. _

_"What?"_

_"Nothing." She avoided his eyes to fidget with the blue EMT blanket that was still draped around her shoulders. "I meant it's you he gives them to, remember? And I know I can't show up like this. That's why you," she rapped Ben's knuckles lightly until he sat back, "are going to give me the shirt, skirt and shoes you brought from the house. And you," she let go of the stick shift at last, "are going to drive to the nearest store so I can grab some make-up for me and an icepack for Jim's face. We're not going to the hospital."_

_"Meg," James started, certain that she, at least, should; but Kit cut him off curtly._

_"Shut up. Please don't talk to her right now."_

_James met his chilly glance in the mirror again, was the first to look away. Hating himself for drinking too much, for losing his pants, for whatever he'd done thereafter to put that look on his friend's face, he reached for the door handle._

_"Maybe I should get a cab."_

_"Maybe you should."_

_"Kit!" _

_Meg folded over again, swore, and retched into the takeaway carton. Not sure if it was shock or dehydration, his fault or hers, James shoved open the door into the sodden morning air. _

_"Jim, hang on." _

_Ben uncapped Meg's water for her. She golloped it gratefully. _

_"It's okay." James unbuckled his belt with hands that wouldn't stay steady. "I'll, um, I'll go call from the station—"_

_"Don't be so fucking stupid!" Meg wheeled in her seat and grabbed the ripped sleeve of his bloody shirt. Water slopped over the centre console. Glaring at her twin, she didn't notice. "Either of you."_

_Ben took the water from her, nodded reassuringly at Kit. He put the bottle in the cup holder and turned to Wilson, reached across him to pull the door closed again._

_"Stay in the car," he said calmly, grasping Wilson's shoulder gently before he sat back. "No one's telling anyone to take a walk down the highway. We just need to know what happened to you two last night. There's a half-dozen rumours flying around from what the girls think happened, to what Sam's crying over, to what the scene cops said, and the campus police. We're freaking out here. Talk to us." _

_"Please," Kit agreed, his voice as sharp and fragile as a dropped mirror. "Jim, I've trusted you. I want to trust you. I don't want to believe what Heather and Tess told me a few hours ago. But it's ten after nine in the morning, we're sitting outside a fucking jail and they took away your shoes and keys and my sister's hurt – and I need not to imagine what went on between you, I need to know."_

So do I,_ James thought, his brow bowing miserably under Kit's painful scrutiny. One minute he was being booked and accused of the unthinkable, the next let go with a warning about house parties and a dropped charge. The dusty dash and garish pink dice dangling from the mirror blurred and he passed a hand over his face, fishing for comprehension in a world that was still swimming in punch and endorphins._

_He remembered glass after glass after glass; then lips and hands and realising it wasn't Sam; that someone, somewhere, had said over and over: no, don't and stop. Had it been don't stop? Or stop, don't?_

_Oh G*d, he couldn't remember…_

_Feeling ill, he darted shot a trembling look across the car. Could Meg? Worse, would she tell him? Because the police had had one account and then, as both she and he began to sober up, there'd been another. Had she lied for him? She must have done. Would she do it again?_

_"Kit, chill," she said, as James struggled to beg her to…or not to…or to undo what he feared he might have done. "I'm not hurt; I'm hungover. And Tess and Heather don't know what they think they know."_

_"Then tell me your side of it!" Kit shut off the ignition, startled everyone with an uncharacteristic smack to the steering wheel. "Because they're saying that you were too drunk to know what you were doing and that Jim knew that and that he…" _

_He broke off to stare at James, his expression torn between strained faith and livid disbelief. He wet his lips and confronted his sister, forcing the words out: "They're saying that he slept with you anyway." _

_His roiling eyes flicked to James once more in the mirror. _

_"They're saying that you did it on purpose."_

* * *

"I didn't," Wilson answered at last, quietly. "Kit, I didn't do this to myself. But…I created the circumstances for it to happen. After my second patient died, Tania, one of her relatives asked to see her medical file."

"You didn't," Cooper groaned, though she'd guessed that he had.

Wilson nodded, began to arrange his cups and cutlery for something to occupy the part of his brain that wanted to spiral him back to that moment, rewrite it, relive it.

"I thought it would help her make sense of what had happened," he sighed. "So I said yes. I went downstairs to change my clothes – it wasn't the cleanest death – and to get the file. I asked her to meet me outside the staff room. She didn't."

Ben touched his upper back, curried his hand soothingly across Wilson's scapula.

"Go on," he urged gently.

Wilson stared at the pale surface of the table. Paper plates and cartons became locker blocks and benches, swathed in steam.

"I-I got caught off-guard in the shower room by her and by Tania's widow," he continued, his voice stuttering with the quickening beat of his heart. "They—"

In his head, the innocuous snap of the opening door cut him off. He had to clench his fists to stop himself reaching for House's hand, wishing upon false hope that he had been the one coming in.

"They—" Sweat broke out under his hair; the sauna-like heat of the shower rolled over his skin. He changed tack quickly, refusing to replay the events aloud. "It was like something out of a horror movie. That kind of anger, well, the last time anyone hated me that much, I swear it was graduation day."

Hananda tilted his head and studied him across the table with growing unease.

"Wilson," he said in a warning voice. "Tell me the only thing that you did was to give her that file?"

* * *

_He was back in the car again, Kit staring at him. The accusation that he'd coerced Meg dangled in the air like a hangman's noose._

_"I didn't. Kit, Ben," his horrified eyes swerved between them, "I wouldn't. Not on purpose – I swear—" _

_He faltered, realised he sounded as confused and unconvincing as he had before the cops. He palmed his pounding forehead again; his hand came away slick with sweat. How much had he drunk? And if he was simply drunk, how could he have done anything at all? It didn't work when he was _just_ drunk…_

_Meg's voice dropped like the trapdoor below. _

_"Okay, so they're sort of right," she admitted grudgingly. "I _had _drunk way too much to know what I was doing. And, yeah, Jim probably knew that." She pressed her fingers to her brother's lips as Kit paled and opened his mouth. "But let's be honest for a moment here: the only person who never knows I've drunk too much is me."_

_The pause was sudden; the ever-present pachyderm in the room, pointed out, squirmed. Meg continued, voice soft and hollow, hesitating like she was realising something for the first time:_

_"I drink too much, Kit. I drink too much and I do it a lot. And yeah, Tess and Heather are going to be on my side. But when Sam's calmed down about being cheated on she won't be. Because she's going to ask me what the hell I put in that punch."_

_She cast a guilty glance toward James that he was too dazed to interpret, though a hot flash of panic burned across his skin as Ben muttered: "Oh Jesus Christ." Meg turned back to her twin, took his hand and squeezed it tightly._

_"Trust me, okay? If you don't want to believe this, you really won't want to believe that either. We need not to talk about this, because that conversation's not going to end well for anyone."_

_She swept unsettled eyes toward the police station behind them._

_"We should get out of here. If we don't let this one go as a stupid drunken mistake, someone's going to get their medical license pulled on the day it's supposed to be handed out. Last night was a fucking mess, but it's not worth our careers. So let's just go graduate, okay?"_

_Ben and Kit exchanged looks in a long silent debate. Finally, reluctantly, Kit nodded. He turned the engine over and put the car into gear. _

_"Okay," he said and glanced up into the rear-view to give James a slow nod of acceptance. "Okay."_

_Ben reached over his shoulder for the bag of Meg's clothes and passed them to her._

_"Okay," he agreed too. "As long as no one is actually hurt…?"_

_"I'm fine," Meg promised, voice still squashed under the weight of her own revelation. She shook herself and twisted in her seat, sought James's blackened eyes with her bloodshot ones. "_We're_ fine, right?"_

_Her expression was that steely blank one she used to bury the memories of being a white rat in a cage, a home science project that hadn't finished until the twins moved out. He knew she wasn't asking about his injuries._

_He hesitated, not sure that they were, that they would be, if they even should be; but he figured he owed it to her to let her choose, just in case._

_"Yeah," he agreed, voice a little too light to be quite honest, but not so much that he couldn't pass it off as such. "Yeah, we're okay. I'm not hurt either, just cuts and bruises."_

_That stirred an unexpected smile from her, half-admiration for their friends, half-sympathy for him. _

_"You were lucky," she observed. "For a woman who cares that much about French manicures, Heather has a wicked right hook."_

* * *

"I screwed up," Wilson told Hananda flatly. "She was vulnerable and upset and angry and I wanted too much to reassure her. I misjudged how I could help her and it didn't work. The consequences…"

He hitched one shoulder, let the sentence hang unfinished. The consequences were written all over him.

Hananda continued to stare. Ben, however, whistled softly.

"Your patients' family did this to you because they didn't like the medicine?"

A passing doctor – a youngish redhead that Wilson didn't know – cast a startled look over at their table. He smiled tightly, waited until the man had moved on.

"Not a word, but a blow," House misquoted in a strangely soothing undertone. "A plague o'both these houses."

The words put the events back on the screen he'd first experienced replaying them in the exam room, briefly distanced Wilson from his battered body and precarious profession. It restored him to a mere actor or author, Thursday to mordant make-believe instead of reality.

Ben shook his head, let out a long breath when Wilson didn't deny it.

"I hope you're suing!"

The taste of his own blood refreshed itself on Wilson's tongue and with it the bitter promise he'd made: _I won't tell._

"They are."

He felt House look at him, hard and sudden and accusatory, dodged his gaze in favour of Cooper's. She, after all, knew how to kill a conversation.

But to his surprise, she wrinkled one corner of her mouth grimly and said: "You'll have to counter-sue. Or the hospital will." She gestured to a poster affixed to the wall a few feet away. "The family will prosecute for malpractice, no doubt, and the hospital will counter for assault on a staff member. It's going to be lawyer palooza."

_Damnit!_ Wilson studied the glossy array of a politically correct doctors, nurses and administrators flanked by burly policemen, all smiling sternly above scarlet capitals warning that abuse of staff would not be tolerated. PPTH had identical ones plastered in every waiting room and hallway. She was right. And he hadn't the first idea what he was going to do about it.

"You should." To his rising disbelief, that came from Hananda. Whatever doubts his friend seemed to have about Wilson's equivocations, he was pushing them aside. "Look, everyone at this table has probably been on the business side of someone's fist over an unpleasant diagnosis. It's a risk of the job and, for the most part, we give benefit of the doubt. But this isn't one of those times. Whether or not you choose to blame yourself for the deaths of your patients, Jim, you did not deserve this for it."

"Of course he did!" House interrupted loudly. He'd withdrawn so far into his watchful silence that his sudden grandiose arm-sweep toward Wilson startled everyone within five feet of him. "Don't you get it? James Wilson getting pummelled into spinach is exactly what it takes to make the whole _universe_ a better place! Fewer people die. E.T. never goes home. All those little bundles of sugar and spice live healthily ever after. Oh brave new world, that has no Wilson in it!"

His hand came to rest with a thud on Wilson's uninjured shoulder. Nonetheless, a jag of muscular soreness zipped through the back of his neck, jolted the breath out of him and morphed any riposte he might've thought of into a tongue-biting hiss. It hurt, but not quite as much as the implication that House thought Wilson so shaken up that he didn't _know_ that what he'd admitted to wasn't enough to excuse this much rough justice. He dodged the challenging blue stare and rubbed his throbbing shoulder when House removed his hand.

"You missed your calling as a stand-up comedian," Cooper observed dryly.

Her expression suggested one was currently surplus to requirements.

"You're not suggesting he _doesn't_ press charges, are you?" Ben frowned across the table, his buckled brows masking the curiosity in his grey-blue eyes as he tried to work out what House was thinking.

House studied Wilson until he was forced to tuck his chin to his chest to avoid giving away any more than his profile, prayed his partner wouldn't read any hope into his own expression.

Finally, House shrugged expansively. "You sue your four-legged patients for every crushed toe and rope-burned palm, do you?"

Ben circled his eyes to the glass-clad sky, recognising the flippant remark for what it was.

"No, but _I_ won't get sued for countering with a short sharp reprimand either. Horses have a better sense of fair play than most people." He motioned discreetly to Wilson's knuckles, where the swelling from striking the nightstand had already faded. "Even you."

Wilson drew his good arm against his body, folding it over his cast, and tucked both his hands down in the narrow gaps between his chest and biceps to hide them.

"Nothing about the situation was fair," he said, certain of this at least. "The family had already lost a sister and a niece, a wife and a daughter. I couldn't've done them much more harm than I already had."

Cooper swallowed a mouthful of her cocktail rather suddenly.

"And what about what they did to you?" She glanced around to ascertain that there was no one too close by and lowered her voice. "Jim, just promise me that all of the damage is what we can see. Because you keep talking about films as though it's some sort of metaphor and there are two things that happen in horror movie showers: murder and rape."

Wilson's skin shrank in against his bones, retreating. He shook his head hard to keep the memories, ever-circling like ravens, from settling, from blowing his pupils to broad black beads that – snap, snap, snap – recaptured moments in brilliant white flashes, stored them in little envelopes inside his skull to ambush him in montages over and over again.

"You're a neurologist not a shrink, Meg. Don't quit your specialty. Since I'm not dead and I'm not your patient, you should be able to figure out that nothing went down in that room that I didn't allow."

She hooked both brows at him sharply.

"O-kay," she said. "I'm going to ignore both the uncharacteristic misogyny there and the professional insult. You're trying to tell me that you chose to let some guy whale on you? Then, for the love of everything sacred, _when_ are you going to stand up for yourself?"

Wilson stared hard at her across the table, willed her to understand, to remember Tess and Heather, to not make him have to spell it out, compound his humiliation.

"There are some circumstances," he hedged, "in which you just _don't._"

Cooper crinkled her brow at him. It was Hananda who sat up slightly.

"Ah," he said, in the tone that House might have said _Ahah!_

A split-second later, House too bolted upright from his affected slouch in the booth.

"So _that's_ why you wouldn't hit back!"

Cooper glanced from one to the other, her lips shaping a baffled: _oh?_

Ben turned toward her. "Guy code," he explained kindly. "You can't hit back if—"

"—it's not just a _guy!_" House exclaimed, his voice rising several decibels. "It was the _sister_! I should've _known! _Wilson, your mother's an idiot; you should withhold your phone calls. Look at where morals get you. You got your ass whupped by a woman!"

_Again._ Thanking Yaweh that House didn't know _that_, Wilson closed his eyes for a split-second and fought for composure. Small wonder, though, his genius partner hadn't got it before – it was hardly a thing that happened, was it? His stomach curled in on itself, as if it could hide beneath his other organs like a little boy shrinking from…from _what_? There was no such thing as a bogey_woman_ now was there?

Pride and shame and chivalry resorted to mental fisticuffs and he answered defensively:

"What was I supposed to do? Hit her back?"

"Yes!" House exclaimed, Cooper seconding him with a sharp nod, though whether he would ever raise a hand to a woman or she at all was as much of a question for a court as Wilson's own culpability for winding up in this disgraceful situation.

Hananda and his partner exchanged one of their wordless glances. Ben shook his head.

"No," Wilson agreed aloud, careful to leave out some further truth of the matter. "I was _not_ going to do that."

At once, he realised he'd been too emphatic.

"Wouldn't?" House demanded with his worst degree of damned brilliant insightfulness. "Or _couldn't?_"

Wouldn't, Wilson wanted to insist. That much of a man he was. He _was_. He wouldn't, even if he _could_ he could no more have stopped Lindsey's methodical quicksilver fists than he could now prevent House figuring out every excruciating detail of his ordeal at her, and her brother-in-law's, hands. Truth was, he _couldn't_.

_Mustn't._

Even so, the expression on House's face turned his stomach inside out. His whole countenance was set in that stillness of a sudden _eureka_, all the lines smoothed from his skin and his jaded eyes shiningly alive. It was just House, just his epiphany moment, one of his rare flashes of pure excitement that came with understanding. In that few seconds, though, it looked to Wilson altogether too much like glee.

"Oh, yeah, House," he found himself saying thoughtlessly, the words dripping off his tongue to drench them both in an equal mix of sarcasm and seriousness. "I didn't just _let_ this happen. I _asked_ for it."

Across the table, both the twins grimaced at his tone.

"Jim," Ben began, at once castigating and comforting.

House, however, scarcely blinked. Eyes wide open, he alone saw the silent scream behind the snarl. He remembered the elevator. The begging. He slid a couple more puzzle pieces into place: knew _she'd_ hurt him first, knew _he'd_ made him consent, made him promise not to tell – and then that he himself had made Wilson undo most of that promise in a moment.

Terrified he'd cut his throat with his own tongue if he dared another word, Wilson forced himself up and punted his wheelchair backwards with his heel. Ignoring both Hananda's protest and the way the floor shifted like a Tilt A Whirl, he headed for the exit.

TBC…


End file.
